When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.

Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you

I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.

It's magical thinking to imagine that the reason unspeakable things are being perpetrated by younger and younger people is that they've fallen under the influence of seductive, lascivious, prurient, and violent material in books, films, television. A great deal of this type of censorship has to do with absolving parents of responsibility - parents who just plop their kids in front of the television and leave them there hour upon hour.

Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves--to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!

My life as a writer consists of 1/8 talent and 7/8 discipline.

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.