One either loves, or waits for love, or banishes love for good. That is the full range of possible choices.

Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.

If Woody Allen were a Muslim, he'd be dead by now.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

Everybody loves 'The Wire,' and I think it's okay, but in the end it's just a police series.