People are complicated. Personally I don't go in for puritanical people.

I think art is much more about an engagement with the world, a way of being called upon and recognizing that the world is speaking to you. Which isn't quite solitude, even if you're alone when it happens.

L.A. is a great place to write because you have a lot of space. I have a big office at home, I can leave the doors open. Flowers bloom all year. But it's unglamorous in all the right ways.

Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics.

There is no single formula for good sentence. An invisible integument that gives the sentence wholeness and musicality, sometimes. But other times, the formula is almost purely one of context. And yet other times, of sheer precision of meaning. This is a good sentence: "Just as he was settling into the warm mud of alcoholic gloom, Shrike caught his arm." "Warm mud of alcoholic gloom" is exact and right and accurate.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

The desire for love is universal but that has never meant it’s worthy of respect. It’s not admirable to want love, it just is.