What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?

James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.

There are two kinds of people I cannot abide: bigots and any well-organized ethnic group.

There is no trajectory so pathetic as that of an artist in decline.

There are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep.