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

I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.

And I’m drawn to failure. I often write about it, and I’m sympathetic with it, I think, because I feel I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.

My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.

The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

None of the rest of my life figures here.