The books turn out to be about things afterwards. I don't go into them with concepts, for the most part.

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

I like small books. I like durable books. I like plain books. I like small type and thin pages.

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

In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.

I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, but to find what does exist, and then to see what it is.

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