Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.

The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.

A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past.

Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic.

The novelist ... must live in paranoia and seek to be one with the world; he must be terrified of experience and hungry for it; he must think himself nothing and believe he is superior to all.

So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.

It's not a good idea to put your wife into a novel; not your latest wife anyway.