The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

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

Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world.

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

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.

There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.