We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

The American dream is a multi-metaphor made up of distinct regions. Many regions of this country are almost like different countries. Even in one state, northern and southern California are like two separate countries.

The mere passage of time makes us all exiles.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

You wake up one morning, those years are gone. There's a comfort in this fact perhaps. I want to think that there must be comfort in all facts we can't alter.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.