I’m alive but I have no life. I’m alive but also dead. I’m dead and alive.
And the funny thing was if you made the best of it, if you smiled through every storm, the bad things were never as terrible as you expected them to be, and the good things were better than anything you could have wished for yourself.
One door away from heaven And the key is ours to lose. One door away from heaven But oh, the entry dues.
Human cruelty and treachery surpassed all understanding. There were no answers. Only excuses.
A politician’s goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.
Experts must read the patterns and judge their usefulness as evidence. Under any of numerous pressures, an expert may wish to misread a pattern or even to alter it. Americans had a touching trust in “experts”.
Never, never try to scope the market.
Somebody asked me about the current choice we’re being given in the presidential election. I said, Well, it’s like two of the scariest movies I can imagine.
I would not cry. I do not cry. How bitter do you risk becoming by swallowing too many tears?
My wife is my first audience. She’s a tough lady, so I can’t say that I ever scare her. Except, of course, when she sees me the way I look before breakfast.
Vladimir Nabokov said the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct.
I’ve not seen in my lifetime any politician who is a heroic figure. The manipulation that all politicians use on one level or another is so transparent.
I don’t write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.
I think the world is full of evil people. I think in some ways we’re in more danger now than before.
I have to admit that when I watch a movie in which there is no moral context for the violence – I find that offensive. I think that’s potentially damaging to society.
Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.
In my personal life, I’m a comic novel. But then, so are we all, because we’re human beings.
Blizzards, floods, volcanos, hurricanes, earthquakes: They fascinate because they nakedly reveal that Mother Nature, afflicted with bipolar disorder, is as likely to snuff us as she is to succor us.
A plot without action is like pasta without garlic, like Dolly Parton without cleavage, and like a writer without his similes.