All Quotes By Tag: Interview

“I think I have many spenglerian moods about the country, and that some day people will look back and think ‘this was a really goofy, unadmirable stupid time.”

“I always felt like I was meant to have been born in another era, another time.”

“I’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about myth and religion. I’ve also spent time with things like The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark; but while I was reading them, I was thinking, “Yes, yes, yes; but don’t you need to maintain a core of solid, rock-hard belief to be an atheist in this world?” [Laughter.] I think what I really like is the idea of belief itself.”

“Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules… afternoons are best, but I’m too lethargic for any real regime. When I’m in the flow of something I can do a regular 9 to 5; when I don’t know where I’m going with an idea, I’m lucky if I do two hours of productive work. There is nothing more off-putting to a would-be novelist to hear about how so-and-so wakes up at four in the a.m, walks the dog, drinks three liters of black coffee and then writes 3,000 words a day, or that some other asshole only works half an hour every two weeks, does fifty press-ups and stands on his head before and after the “creative moment.” I remember reading that kind of stuff in profiles like this and becoming convinced everything I was doing was wrong. What’s the American phrase? If it ain’t broke…”

“…I never once believed what they wanted us to believe – that we as black people are inferior to whites…”

“I believe the visionaries and true reflections of society will be rewarded after their lives. Those being rewarded now are giving the public what it needs now, usually applauding its current state and clearing consciences.”

“Who is better off? The one who writes to revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them? Or the one who writes to escape the tediousness of that which awaits them outside? Whose flame will last longer?”

“Trying to live up to yourself is the most trying thing.”

“I’d rather strive for the kind of interview where instead of me asking to introduce myself to society, society asks me to introduce myself to society.”

“I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn’t have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.”

“I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.”

“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”

“I had an interview once with some German journalist—some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists—maybe a week after—and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, ‘It’s impolite; remove your glasses.’ I said, ‘Do I ask you to remove your bra?”

“Don’t try online dating, it never works. You should always try many lines!”

“Your hair is still wet!”