Feeling is taboo, especially in New York. I read in some little magazine the other day that The New Yorker and The New York Times were sclerotic, meaning, "completely turned to rock." The critics here are that way.

Almost everything official in America is a huge fraud.

I think America, really, is over.

New York establishment isn't really a literary establishment. It's just a collection of broken down old newspaper hacks who pass judgment on books that they have not even read, with assuredness of Jehova.

There's really nothing wrong with sentimentality... Nothing I wrote is sentimental.

Publishers seem to be in an alcoholic haze most of the time. Well, the publishers have no idea what a writer is.

I wish people would call poisons poison. I don't mind people smoking marijuana, but they should admit it's a poison, and coffee's a poison, but the Americans lie so.