Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.

I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a sense of a completed design, that somebody is in charge, and that while life is pointless, the book isn't pointless. The author knows where he is going. That's form.

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.

Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.

Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation.