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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't have any home. Everyone I grew up with, my family, are all dead. So I feel kind of like a ghost. I'm more interested in the past.

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

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