The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.
There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant.
There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.
Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.
Homelessness is a part of our American system. There should be nothing wrong with this condition as long as the individual is not sentenced to unnecessary suffering and punishment.
Persons who have been homeless carry within them a certain philosophy of life which makes them apprehensive about ownership.
I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.
Going around under an umbrella interferes with one's looking up at the sky.
Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.
Banks introduced the installment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States.
As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.
And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have.
A trait which differentiated New York from European cities was the incredible freedom and ease in which life, including sexual life, could be carried on, on many levels.
A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.