A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.

Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.

The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.

I'm a painter in my dreams, you know.

There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers.

The person who writes the bank's commercials is not the person who makes the loans.

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.