True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.

He was a regulator first-class, which was another term for metalworker unskilled.

American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.

All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.

Time and death: It's the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It's just what's there. It was not something I planned to do.