All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn't that what we're all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.

Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.

The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

We don't all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even 'Little Red Riding Hood.' The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

You start Saul, and end up Paul,' my grandfather had often said. 'When you're a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul - though you still Sauls around on the side.