There was no way to grasp the reality of the present which slid away each second, invisible as air; reality only existed after the fact, in one's vision of the past.

When I begin a story at my desk, the window to my back, the path is not there. As I start to walk, I make the path.

Freedom is a public library.

In my early twenties, that's when I really began to write. Before that, I was too busy working, keeping myself going.

I've always known a lot of very bad people, destructive, brutes of a certain kind. Then I've seen these lovely impulses and what not, and they've stayed with me and comforted me.

Life was an impenetrable mystery cloaked in babble.

Imagination has to do with one's awareness of the reality of other people as well as of one's own reality. Imagination is a bridge between the provincialism of the self and the great world.