There is a kind of perverse unity forming among us, born, I think, of the discontent of all classes of people with the endless frustration of life.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

Without alienation, there can be no politics.

The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of politicians.

I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I'd find you coming through some door.

Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still — that's how you build a future.

It may be that even if half consciously, we choose our personalities to maintain a certain saving balance in the family's little universe.