Creativity is an innate function in a human being, as we see in tribal peoples, who spent their considerable leisure time making religious artifacts and sacred art. That is what I would call a direct culture, in that everybody in it is directly in touch with all the elements, both of the culture and of the environment.

I require and enforce as non-interrupted a state of living as you can get in America right now without going off to live by yourself in the mountains.

All paths cause pain, so to chose the safe over the audacious will not give you less pain, only less beauty.

These things - the degree of vulnerability, the degree of skill, the degree of the longing to give - are influx all the time, And to lump all that under the word "creativity" assumes something much more static than it is. That's why an artist may be marvelous in her 20s, and be creating automatic crap in her 40s. A writer may be trivial in his 20s, and be writing incredibly in his 50s, because those things are always in flux.

There are writers I know and respect who are very good about what's outside, and not too hot about what's inside.

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.

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