The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.

You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you're not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.

The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.