Let's say there's something operating in you called Mind. It's very powerful, but it's dampened by the body, by physicality. When you die, that tether gets cut and off the mind goes with incredible power.

I guess: People who are comfortable enough with reality to allow other sorts of realities and other mindsets to just be, and then to regard these with real interest and joy [and the joy appears in the prose quality itself].

I like [Barak] Obama. I like him. So how far does rationality help to persuade anybody? You know, I'm not so sure.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

I feel that there is nothing that can happen to a person that is banal. Everything that happens to us is interesting.

One of the ideas that runs through this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] is this Buddhist notion that the mind is incredibly powerful; not the brain but the mind.

I try to keep my artistic opinions not so much "to myself" but "on myself."