For madness must be punished in a world in which mere sanity is prized. The revenge of the ordinary upon the gifted.

Childhood is the province of the imagination and when I immerse myself in it, I re-create it as it was, as it could have been, as I wanted - and didn't want - it to be.

All actors are whores. They want only one thing: to seduce you.

For madness must be punished in a world in which mere sanity is prized. The revenge of the ordinary upon the gifted.

I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.