Literature got me into this mess and literature is going to have to get me out of it.

I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.

You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings. You'll be washed out to sea and never seen again.

I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions. You can travel the length and breadth of my body over superhighways of shame and inhibition and fear.

When I have a first draft, I have a floor under my feet that I can walk on. Then, especially with the help of the computer, rewriting is so easy to do with the computer, much easier than it used to be with the typewriter. So the books go through numerous drafts.

For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.