I think fame is something that you've achieved in your inner self that becomes known to others outside you. There are really very few famous people in history.

Margaret Meade is always running around saying that marijuana's just like bread and water! Well, bread and water are poison, and marijuana's a poison. Now, if you like poison, why shouldn't you have it? But don't try to pretend that it's innocuous.

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

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.

I am against all machines. It's no wonder that so many Americans go on dope when they have no other cultural stimulus than a television.

I've never been in fashion. Not at all.

As always, I wonder if I'll get through the winter. Then when winter is over, I wonder about the summer. But that's because the system decided which author shall be commercially successful. As I said, the most vicious of them all is The New York Times, because it pretends to be literary and impartial, and it's really this opinionated, myopic, stupid giant of incompetence.