A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular.

Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.