Most of my childhood revolved around wondering when we would be blown up by the Russians. I couldn't stand the news, I knew that if the missile were launched, mortality would arrive in half an hour, so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling that I was 30 minutes from being dead.

everything is toxic. That's the point. You can't avoid toxins. Thinking you can is just another symptom of the toxic overload stage.

In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

Whatever you love is beautiful; love comes first, beauty follows. The greater your capacity for love, the more beauty you find in the world.

it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.

Many said that now there was no hope of salvation, for a man might do anything and be in the wrong. There was no way to tell. It was better to stay on the steading and mind the cows and be content with such days as are left to one and cease to wonder about life everlasting.