Faint equivalents can sometimes be found ... . Or it can be rendered obliquely-an adolescent's mental image of his or her parents making love, which must be something on the order of crocodiles mating.

The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.

Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody.

Well chaps first I'd like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.

My mother studied English and drama at the University of Pennsylvania, where my father studied architecture. She was a great influence in all sorts of ways, a wicked wit.

Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.

Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.