Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty.

With short stories, the story-teller must have a story to tell, not merely some sweet prose to take out for a walk

To construct a proper privacy, making it a privilege rather than a burden, we first need to construct a community-love, family, politics, art.

Old age is wasted on the elderly: the young know what to do with it-insist on something different.

I always ask young writers, 'Are you certain you want to be a writer? If you're absolutely sure, then do it.' If you really want to write, writing has to take precedence over everything else, except for taking care of your loved ones. It has to be more important than any possession, more important than fame. We hear about just a few writers who get famous, but most of them don't. It's got to mean more than that.

The fact that all of us die anyway (the rumor turns out to be true) is a mere detail in the celestial glow of imagination. The artist's eyes destroy death.

Isolation from power makes men look for a mob in which they can be strong.