I went to New York to be born again. And when the train plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with its lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.

Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

Everybody knows that the dumbest people in any American university are in the education department, and English after that.