Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.

I am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil.

I think the Jews are an amazing group of people and their survival is amazing.

You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

Divorce is my generation's coming of age ceremony - a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.

Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.

I am never so calm as after I have written. And the next morning I will feel the familiar anxiety and I will have to begin the process all over again.