It was a great place to write a novel about book burning, in the library basement.

Stuff your eyes with wonder.

I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em.

I'm not a serious person, and I don't like serious people.

I want your loves to be multiple. I don't want you to be a snob about anything. Anything you love, you do it.

My passions drive me to the typewriter every day of my life, and they have driven me there since I was twelve. So I never have to worry about schedules. Some new thing is always exploding in me, and it schedules me, I don’t schedule it. It says: Get to the typewriter right now and finish this.

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.