He leaned up a little and watched her face. Her face would now be, forever, more mysterious and impenetrable than the face of any stranger. Strangers' faces hold no secrets because the imagination does not invest them with any. But the face of a lover is an unknown precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

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

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

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.

One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.

I will no longer take anyone's word for my experience.