I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.

All the literati keep at least one imaginary friend.

For darkness restores what light cannot repair.

I am quite prepared to die here [in NY]. It doesn't matter at all. I don't know better places, or perhaps if I do I am not prepared to make a move.

...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.

Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.