Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans.

To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement.... Whoever defeats the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus.

Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.

I must admit that the existence of Disneyland (which I know is real) proves that we are not living in Judaea in 50 AD. . . . Saint Paul would never go near Disneyland. Only children, tourists, and visiting Soviet high officials ever go to Disneyland. Saints do not.

Can we consider the universe real, and if so, in what way?

He started keeping a journal - had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.

I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards.