The famous carry about with them a great weight of patriarchal baggage-the footnotes of their lives.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.

The future may be an enemy. Time can turn happy days and nights into nothing.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading.

Since films and television have staged everything imaginable before it happens, a true event, taking place in the real world, brings to mind the landscape of films.

Mothers born on relief have their babies on relief. Nothingness, truly, seems to be the condition of these New York people. They are nomads going from one rooming house to another, looking for a toilet that functions.

How certain human beings are able to create works of art is a mystery, and why they should wish to do so, at a great cost to themselves usually, is another mystery. Works are not created by one's life; every life is rich in material.