What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Passion is not friendly. It is arrogant, superbly contemptuous of all that is not itself, and, as they very definition of passion implies the impulse to freedom, it has a might intimidiating power. It contains a challenge. It contains an unspeakable hope.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

One writes out of one thing only - one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.

Most people... find a disorientating mismatch between the long-term nature of their liabilities and the increasingly short-term nature of their assets.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.