Artists are the people for whom the world is not enough.

The tone of every book is slightly different; there's a music that each has that is distinct from all the others.

It always stimulates me to discover new examples of my own prejudice and stupidity, to realize that I don't know half as much as I think I do.

It's extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can't get a job on a ship unless you have seaman's paper's, and you can't get seaman's papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

Even you, who’ve lived inside your body for 64 years, would apparently be unable to recognize your foot in an isolated photograph of that foot, not to think of your ear or one of your eyes or elbow, also familiar to you in the context of the whole, but utterly anonymous when taken piece by piece. We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.

I like the sound a typewriter makes.

you can survive only if nothing is necessary to you