There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.

People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent.

To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it.

A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.