1. “The genius of a primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness in noble and beautiful ways.”
2. “Evil is movement towards void.”
3. “A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot.”
4. “I think fiction recues history from its confusions.”
5. “The genius of rock music is that it matched the cultural hysteria around it.”
6. “War is the ultimate realization of modern technology.”
7. “Ecology is boring for the same reason that destruction is fun.”
8. “The language of my books has shaped me as a man.”
9. “Fame and secrecy are the high and low ends of the same fascination.”
10. “People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.”
11. “Tourism is the march of stupidity.”
12. “Words are not necessary to one’s experience of the true life.”
13. “The less important you are in an office, the more they expect the happy smile.”
14. “Facts are lovely things.”
15. “All human existence is a trick of light.”
16. “A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.”
17. “Everything that goes on in your whole life is a result of molecules rushing around somewhere in your brain.”
18. “The future belongs to crowds.”
19. “Somehow pictures always lead to people as masses. Books belong to individuals.”
20. “Technology is lust removed from nature.”
21. “If you know you’re worth nothing, only a gamble with death can gratify your vanity.”
22. “The greater the scientific advance, the more primitive the fear.”
23. “Pain is just another form of information.”
24. “Stories have no point if they don’t absorb our terror.”
25. “Writing is concentrated form of thinking.”
26. “As technology advances in complexity and scope. fear becomes more primitive.”
27. “A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.”
28. “Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.”
29. “The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.”
30. “I’ve got death inside me. It’s just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.”
