Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.

The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe.

I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.

You have to learn to do everything, even to die.

Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop

I think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything.

Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?