Talent is more erotic when it's wasted.

The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live. The more time he spent in a cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now.

Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.

It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.'

You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.

I don’t want your candor. I want your soul in a silver thimble.