A book can just be a description of a stick being snapped in half. If the reader is brought to feel the plight of the stick, well, you can imagine what that would be like.

I don't think anything needs to happen in a book.

Three things are required of you: the wishes you made when you first knew the breadth of this life; the contract you signed when you decided your wishes were not true or possible; and the exacting of the punishment you agreed to when you knew you would break the contract of your life.

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.

If he acts, if he doesn't, it's meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.

Americans are genuinely and profoundly anti-intellectual. They are especially so in their pleasure-seeking, which is epically banal.

That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!