The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

You always find things you didn't know you were going to say, and that is the adventure.

It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.

I know how to choke. Given even a splinter-thin opportunity to let my side down and destroy my own score, I will seize it. Not only does ice water not run through my veins, but what runs there has a boiling point lower than body temperature.

The fact that we still live well cannot ease the feeling that we no longer live nobly.

All those little congruences and arabesques you prepared with such delicate anticipatory pleasure are gobbled up as if by pigs at a pastry cart.