I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.

When you get older, keeping the private stuff private seems less important.

Every year there's a few more things I'm not sure of. I've decided that a wide-ranging uncertainty is the mark of the true maturity of man.

And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

I can't persuade myself that one of the problems facing the planet today might be a shortage of books by me.

I haven't got anything against cats. I haven't got anything against elk either, but that doesn't mean I'm going to keep one in the store so I'll have a place to hang my hat.

This church was open and seemingly unattended, and it was a throwback in another way as well. The candles in the little side altars were real ones, actual wax candles that burned with an open flame. Lots of churches have switched over to electrified altars. You drop your quarter in the slot and a flame-shaped bulb goes on and stays on for your quarter's worth of time. It's like a parking meter, and if you stay too long they tow away your soul.