Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird

It's not that you aren't likable. On the contrary. You are. It's just that one wonders if you haven't made a career out of being so likable.

As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.

I do not gather things, I prefer to rent them rather than to possess them.

I write for a certain sphere of readers in the United States who on average watch seven and a half hours of multichannel television per day.

You don't die in the United States, you underachieve.

There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.