To know what you want to say is not the best condition for writing a novel. Novels go happiest when you discover something you did not know you knew: an insight into one of your opaque characters, a metaphor that startles you... a truth... that used to elude you.

The fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag.

The essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

I guess all that's left is to love the fire.

Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.

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.

Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic.