I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.

Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.

I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, what outrages them, what they applaud and find sympathetic in human beings and what they detest about human beings, too. They are writers of great emotional range.

When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language

Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.

I want to go on being a student," I told him. "I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader," I said. "DON'T SOUND SO ASHAMED," he said. "READING IS A GIFT." "I learned it from you," I told him. "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT- IT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT. IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.

If you asked me one day, I might say, "Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious." If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, "No."