There are novels that end well, but in between there are human beings acting like human beings. And human beings are not perfect. All of the motives a human being may have, which are mixed, that's the novelists' materials. That's where they have to go. And a lot of that just isn't pretty. We like to think of ourselves as really, really good people. But look in the mirror. Really look. Look at your own mixed motives. And then multiply that.

Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

He stops, looks up at this window, and I can see the white oblong of his face. We look at each other. I have no rose to toss, he has no lute. But it's the same kind of hunger.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

It doesn't really matter what "genre" your book is. What matters is that it's a good book of its kind. Whatever that kind may be.

I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.