We didn't starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.

To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.

A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go - if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.

Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.

It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.