I think... it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain.'

You should be careful about who you pretend to be, because who you pretend to be - is actually who you are!

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.

Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

We are America's Great Lakes people, her freshwater people, not an oceanic but a continental people. Whenever I swim in an ocean, I feel as though I am swimming in chicken soup.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.