The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn't imagine ourselves through a day without it.

Some ways of naming a generation are fruitful and some are not. Postmodernism is not. It doesn't really say anything.

I learned my realism from guys like Kafka.

My disenchantment? Oh no, my dear, there are no disenchantments, merely progressions and styles of possession. To exist is to be spellbound.

We need myths to get by. We need story; otherwise the tremendous randomness of experience overwhelms us. Story is what penetrates.

People, fearing their own extinction, are willing to accept and perpetuate hand-me-down answers to the meaning of life and death; and, fearing a weakening of the tribal structures that sustain them, reinforce with their tales the conventional notions of justice, freedom, law and order, nature, family, etc. The writer, lone rider, has the power, if not always the skills, wisdom, or desire, to disturb this false contentment.

The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn't imagine ourselves through a day without it.