Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer's job is: go out and find some stuff to love.

I don't mind being criticized intelligently; although I don't love it.

Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

Twitter is a deliberate abstention. Somehow I hate the idea of there always being, in the back of my mind, this little voice saying: 'Oh, I should tweet about this.'

Suddenly absurdism wasn’t an intellectual abstraction, it was actually realism. You could see the way that wealth was begetting wealth, wealth was begetting comfort — and that the cumulative effect of an absence of wealth was the erosion of grace.

The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery.

Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?