A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.

Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock.

One writes out of one thing only - one's own experience.

Man cannot live by profit alone.

In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.