New York is full of people . . . with a feeling for the tangential adventure, the risky adventure, the interlude that's not likely to end in any double-ring ceremony.

Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.

I recognize a lot of the things I'm going through. Like, I lose my temper a lot and I become unhinged and kind of hysterical.

I just read everything I could get my hands on. I taught myself to read or my mother taught me. Who knows how I learned to read? It was before I went to school, so I would go to the library and just take things off the shelf. My mother had to sign a piece of paper saying I could take adult books.

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.

The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.