What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

I'm very unhappy when I'm not writing.

It is my belief...that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the success-stakes.

There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.

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.

I don't know why I still find it so hard to accept that words are faulty and by their very nature innacurate

After a certain age - and for some of us that can be very young - there are no new people, beasts, dreams, faces, events: it has all happened before.