The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

• Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.
• I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.
• I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.
• There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.
• There's a connection between the advances that are made in technology and the sense of primitive fear people develop in response to it.
• The future belongs to crowds.
• I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.
• I watch movies occasionally, and I watch documentaries. Virtually nothing else.
• There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.
• People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.