I always thought Cyrano De Bergerac was a coward. He could fight a hundred swordsmen, but he was afraid of his nose, and he was afraid of Roxanne. Jam as cowardly as anybody about facing my fears. So, you spend your you years as an artist fighting those hundred people that you happen not to fear. Then you wake up one morning and realize all this time you're afraid of your nose. That's what you're going to have to face for the rest of your life. And you don't feel very courageous. But, if you don't face it, you dry up as an artist.

Good is not the opposite of evil, joy is the opposite of evil.

People are judged continuously everywhere on the most intimate level by the prices on their head. Most of them accept the judgment. It's very hard to have self-respect, or to maintain a state of creativity under these conditions.

I try to write into the heart of experience. Then, through the experience of the writing, that heart reveals itself to me. To write it down for others, as a door to go through it they choose, is the price of the experience, the price of the ticket. This is the demand that God, if you like, puts on you for being an artist.

Be careful how you choose your enemy, for you will come to resemble him. The moment you adapt your enemy's methods your enemy has won. The rest is suffering and historical opera.

To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind--is to be crazy, not healthy.

If your vulnerability has become hardened, it's very, very difficult to be creative.