There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch.

And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.

The privileged classes can afford psychoanalysis and whiskey. Whereas all we get is sermons and sour wine. This is manifestly unfair. I protest, silently.

The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.

The much heaves and palpitates. It is multidirectional and has a mayor.