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

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

Television masturbates its audience even though the audience is not really watching. It masturbates orifices the audience doesn't have. It sticks holes in the viewer and masturbates in those holes. Then it finally gets into the brain and masturbates there, too.

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

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

There's the world of the newspapers. They believe that what is happening is happening, which is so naïve. Because they're the first to turn on that.

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.