Life is that which - pressingly, persistently, unfailingly, imperially - interrupts.

To desire to be what one can be is purpose in life. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces. Who squanders talent praises death.

The engineering is secondary to the vision.

Invention despoils observations, insinuation invalidates memory. A stewpot of bad habits, all of it - so that imaginative writers wind up, by and large, a shifty crew, sunk in distortion, misrepresentation, illusion, imposture, fakery.

After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies.

All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.