The world is telling you through The New York Times and The New York Review of Books "You must shut up. You must never appear again. Because you are not relevant to us." So you have to fight their attempt to destroy you, fight to continue feeling.

The public is totally illiterate in America. It can't read at all. It's absolutely insensitive to words.

I don't think it's like eastern mysticism, which leaves the person whole. It's really another form of cancer, television.

If you're a writer, you have to be an egomaniac. You have to just believe in yourself, which is hard work.

None of my books are best-sellers. In fact, the only thing that's kept me alive is the books that are in paperback. People find them, they like them, and they pass them on.

The New York Times is the worst newspaper in the world and it's extremely vicious to artists.

Almost everything official in America is a huge fraud.