People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.

My friend was about to introduce me when she looked at me and smiled and said, "Whose little boy are you?"

I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.

And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, 'Look.' I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, 'Look again,' which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can't explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you've had that experience, you see differently.

All art is a kind of confession.