All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.

Most writers are middle-class and are the children of doctors or lawyers.

If you are at the mercy of what they call print interviews and the mercy of people who write about you, they can always tell lies.

You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.

There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, "Well, so-and-so will like this," which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.