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.

Employment is my right my destiny.

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.

Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.

I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.