Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.

Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.

Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.