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.

Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

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

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

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

After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.