Jesse Ball

There's a misunderstanding about what nonsensical things are - the idea that they're just funny, and that's the beginning and the end of it. Nonsense is not 'not sense' - it operates at the edge of sense. It teems with sense - at the same time, it resists any kind of universal understanding.

My bookshelves have no order. I prune them regularly and sell the books to Myopic Books, a Chicago bookstore. They give me store credit, and then I spend all the store credit, and, presumably, return to sell them back more of the books I bought from them.

I had a lot of trouble in school to begin with. I got left back in kindergarten, and I was in special education. My teachers didn't have very much faith in me.

I think it's a dangerous thing for anyone to have power over other people.

New York feels like sometimes it's not part of the United States. So does L.A. Chicago feels like it's a big city that's part of America.

I love to reread, even more than I like to read, so keeping a hold of books that I adore is very important, although they flee from me - they are always fleeing.

The move to hide aging is sort of sad. But it's a wonderful thing to celebrate our aging.

Books should have a purpose. Books should be practical in some sense.

In life, people talk at right angles. One asks a question, and the other replies in part, then uses that part to move the conversation to something else. Everyone has an agenda, has something they're trying to say - or not say.

As far as I can see, the best writers in the last two hundred years have been Whitman, Rilke, Proust, Kafka. Their best works: 'Leaves of Grass - 1855;' 'Duino Elegies;' 'The Captive & The Fugitive;' 'The Castle.'

I probably like being isolated more than many people do, but I'm lucky to have the friendship of many fine people, and they keep me from becoming very isolated. The world of my mind is certainly a populated and warm place, too. It's difficult for me to become too isolated with such resources.

Lying is our stock-in-trade as social creatures.