I don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the form of a work.

Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day.

It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.

The punishment – to the body, the brain, the spirit – a man must endure to become even a moderately good boxer is inconceivable to most of us whose idea of personal risk is largely ego-related or emotional.

It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we really are.

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds; for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.