Growing up is, after all, only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what every one shares.

All my friends' mothers were appalling women.

You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.

Laughter is by definition healthy.

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.

The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation.

America can be a very hysterical country intellectually and very puritanical, too. You probably have fun in private, but to the rest of the world you seem to hate fun - to be big on agendas and short on spontaneity. The image you present is one of appalling conformity. The thought police is what you are ruled by.