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.

The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.

The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day.

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

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.

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.

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.