My theory is that the world is a difficult place to live in and distraction is the name of the game.

For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.

Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

I guess I'm depressed. I don't know. I can't explain it. Part of it is the irritability of being 84, and part of it is being not as physically strong as I once was. And part of it is my misunderstanding, I think, of what's going on in the world.

Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.

How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.