In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.

What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.

I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.

In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.

Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.

Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and England, we still do. There are writers here who are the most sophisticated commentators, but they're not asked. Like Don DeLillo, who sort of forecast most of the modern world before it happened.