The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. "Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?" she asked me. "The big show is inside my head," I said.

I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.

You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.

We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

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

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.