All art is a kind of confession.

To defend oneself against a fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.

When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know.

And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.

It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.