One trouble: to be a professional anything in the United States is to think of oneself as an expert and one's ideas as semisacred, and to treat others in a certain way - professionally.

Everything you study, everything you learn, makes you a better writer, because you have more understanding of how things work.

I don't find that writing about parts of my life had much effect except in some cases to improve my memory. To get into parts of the past I want to recall very vividly, I use a form of directed meditation.

When I work I am pure as an angel tiger and clear is my eye and hot my brain and silent all the whining grunting piglets of the appetites.

the body is simple as a turtle / and straight as a dog: / the body cannot lie.

Pain is a forcing sieve that turns me to gruel.

If sex is a war, I am a conscientious objector: I will not play.