For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.