Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.

All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.

A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.

What the Gospels actually said was: don't kill anyone until you are absolutely sure they aren't well connected.

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so.

[Ayres] was our city because we were building it. That's how I felt when I walked around town.