Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care at all resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in literature.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.

My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.

the time for prizes and competitions at art festivals is over. Competition is too closely tied to values that are alien to the arts.

And then there were the wallflowers who had recognized for years that the thing was hopeless, who had found in that information a kind of calm. They no longer tried, with a bright and desperate effort, to sustain a conversation with somebody's brother, somebody's usher, somebody's roommate, somebody's roommate's usher's brother... The category of wallflower who had given up on all this was very quiet, not indifferent, only quiet. And she always brought a book.

Sanity ... is the most profound moral option of our time.