Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.

Most movies are not very good. Most people know it and like to see them anyway.

I love the laconic. Clearly, I am not of their number.

Sanity ... is the most profound moral option of our time.

Did I throw the most important thing perhaps, by accident, away?

That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.