We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters.

American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.

There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.

You have a life and there are these volumes on either side that go unvisited; some day soon as the world winds he will lie beneath what he now stands on, dead as those insects whose sound he no longer hears, and the grass will go on growing, wild and blind.

Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire.

It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter.

Being on TV is like being alive, only more so.