It would not be practical for her to hate herself. Luckily, God sends a substitute, a husband.

Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.

For God's sake,' the dog is saying, 'open the universe a little more!

The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.

...is the carbon molecule lined with thought?

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.