And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.

The square root of I is I.

I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling

Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.

Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.