It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.

The sexuality doesn't end. It really doesn't. You're sexual your whole life, if you're a sexual person.

I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.

There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.

Women are individuals in parenting, and why not?

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.