As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.

The signore...wishes her to begin at the beginning.

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.

You take off your clothes and you're in bed with somebody, and that is indeed where whatever you've concealed, your particularity, whatever it may be, however encrypted, is going to be found out, and that's what all the shyness is all about and what everybody fears.

Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it.

'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.