Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.

Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel.

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.