The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started.

Sex is like money; only too much is enough.

Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.

Basically it's true that my own life has been my chief window for life in America, beginning with my childhood and the conflicts, the struggles, the strains that I felt in my own family.

That's the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective. Then you begin to feel crowded.