I don't know how to make the critics happy!

I think in a way the great irony or paradox about America is that it makes it so hard for the sensitive person, the artist, the impressionable person, the person whose raison d'etre is to incarnate the creative will, rather than to just make money, and yet that extreme difficulty that the culture poses for us has created some of the best artists in the last hundred years.

I think Mozart, like you, is an example of someone who has the gods moving through him, and his religion was creation.

Everything about it was wrong. Thats why it worked so good.

There are a lot of people in this country who really like my writing. And a lot of writers respect me. But the so-called establishment? They hate me.

I have rituals for cleaning out resentments, disappointments, heartbreak, depression and for work. One of the things I do is go over old stuff if I have been unable to write for a while.

The responsibility of the artist is to transcend the human ego.