I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.

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.

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self- solitude is the enemy of well- being.

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.