There's Chile and there's Uruguay, and no one quite knows why Uruguay is so appealingly selfless because they've had their terror and their revolution like all the rest. But somehow, there's something in them.

Faith is a talent, and it goes the way of all your talents. Getting old is the subtraction of your powers. Which very much goes for writing.

People look at fame and feel deprived if they haven't got it, feeling that this is a basic, almost a human right, a civil right. And also feel the same way about wealth, I suppose - why haven't I got it?

While making love, we often talk about money. I like it. I like that dirty talk

I think Jorge Borges said that when Argentineans die they turn into angels and go and live in Uruguay. But for the rest of South America, you have to say that it's getting there - becoming civilized - and will get there. It's had a real grit war in history. The choice between those societies until recently was the choice between tyranny and chaos. Everyone understood that. You've got to have a strong man, or it's going to be a mess.

My 12-year-old daughter said to me, "Enough with the subtitles, Daddy, for crying out loud." Because they always seem to cloud the issue rather than clarify it.

It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true-unless it isn't true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward-shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there.