I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

Life has no beginning, middle or end.

Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.

I would say my theme has always been paradise lost, always the lost cause, the lost leader, the lost utopia.

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.

Dreiser... I love... and almost wouldn't speak to anyone who ever attacked him.