Each man, therefore, is the entire world, bearing within his genes a memory of all mankind. Or as Leibniz put it: ‘Every living substance is a perpetual living mirror of the universe’

The truth of the story lies in the details.

[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.

The pictures do not lie, but neither do they tell the whole story. They are merely a record of time passing, the outward evidence.

For me a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

In the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life

Money's important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don't have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life.