I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.

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.

I was the goldfish that leapt out of the bowl.

If a person had accused him of meanness, he could have defended himself. But with a dog - you did something cheap to it when you were sure no one was looking, and it was as though you had done it in front of a mirror.

And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall.

My first job was working in a dress shop in Los Angeles in 1940, for $7 a week.

My life was incoherent to me. I felt it quivering, spitting out broken teeth.