You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.

Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.

If after you read something, you connect with it, you want to do it.

I think what will happen is that fiction will become more like poetry. As in, the only people who read it will write it.

When civilization takes a nose dive, how can you look away? You've got to be there. You've got to be at the bottom of the swimming pool taking notes.

The best thing about the iPhone is this that tells me where I am all the time. There's never a need to feel lost anymore.