I always knew I was an excellent liar; I just didn't know that I had it in me to fool myself.
Why do men carry guns and build prison camps, when the nurturing earth is made for freedom?
Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.
The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.
One reason writers write is out of revenge.
Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.
I wanted to use what I was, to be what I was born to be - not to have a 'career', but to be that straightforward obvious unmistakable animal, a writer.
Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.
We each create our world by what we choose to notice, creating a world of distinction that makes sense to us. We then 'see' the world through the self we have created.
Sometimes you look in a field and you see a cow and you think it's a better cow than the one you've got in your own field. It's a fact. Right? And it never really works out that way.
The funny thing is people won't let me pay for things. I'll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, 'Oh no, it's on the house. '