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.

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

The worse the author, the more he is known.

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

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.

In a competitive society, the thing people fear the most is love.

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