The lessons I learned that were most important were the ones that hurt my feelings.

It's easy to create a country, all you have to do is to think of a name for it

The reason I was able to give up smoking was because of the computer. You couldn't lean a cigarette on a computer, like you could on a typewriter. So it just made it that much more difficult to smoke. So I quit.

It’s hard to stay away from religion when you mess with acid.

I try very hard to be fair, and I look for ironies. In a way, I live on ironies as a novelist.

What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

I think there's a necessity for some attachment to the spiritual world and, in a way, people really have to have it.