as a child i suppose i was not quite normal. my happiest times were when i was left alone in the house on a saturday.

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.

There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it.

Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity

Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line.

The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.