I don't have all the facts. And I might misremember. As a matter of fact, after I finished Winter Journal, I realized that I'd gotten someone's name wrong.

The childhood scenes [ in The Tree of Life] are tremendous. My favorite moment is when the mother levitate - for three seconds. Of course, this is how a child thinks of his mother.

I don't like that word [memoir]. Whenever my publishers have wanted to use it, I've told them to take it away.

I thought I was terrible [to play a cameo] and decided never to act again.

I don't know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't have to. But it is a compulsion. You don't choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

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’

Brooklyn has a bit of everything - some of the most beautiful things in America, and some of the most wretched, ugly, impoverished things.