The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.

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.

The greater the power of any subjective state, the more total is a Romantic's assumption that everyone understands exactly what he is about to do, therefore waste not a moment by stopping to tell them.

Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

When I read it ["Tough Guys Don't Dance"], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.