“California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn’t really need. You can quote me on that.”

I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.

There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever… money, for instance, or war.

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

I’ve never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn’t have a price tag on the other side.

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

Conquered people tend to be witty.

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.

We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.

We lose the magic whenever we stop telling our story and begin to wonder how we’re doing, if we’re selling it, if the listener likes us.

I really don’t like the gym. I like experiences, so I take any chance I get to go on a bicycle or on a hike.

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.

There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.

I don’t like peas, and I’m glad I don’t like them, because if I liked them I would eat them and I hate them.

You don’t sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn’t work like that.