It's a man's world, they say; but in its daily textures it is a world created by and for women.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

Women, fire in their crotch, won't burn out, begin by fighting off pricks, end by going wild hunting for one that still works.

Photography is the first art wherein the tool does most of the work.

Why does one never hear of government funding for the preservation and encouragement of comic strips, girlie magazines and TV soap operas? Because these genres still hold the audience they were created to amuse and instruct.

Hemingway describes literary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other.