I will say, too, that lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve. The best idea in that apple, though, is making jazz.

If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.

So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend.

Much of the blame is the malarkey that artists have created to glorify war, which as we all know, is nonsense, and a good deal worse than that — romantic pictures of battle, and of the dead and men in uniform and all that. And I did not want to have that story told again.

What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?

In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me.

I think jokes are a perfectly viable form of literature. Some critics take issue with me because I make my points and discuss my ideas with jokes, rather than with oceanic tragedy.