The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.

I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words--changing nothing.

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

A common and usually unfortunate answer is “Write about what you know.” Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination, nothing is quicker to turn on the psyche's censoring devices and distortion systems, than trying to write truthfully.

Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.

Find a pile of gold and sit on it.