Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

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

I think maybe writers come from different planets. I mean, not in any sense as extravagant as Baryshnikov. But there are some writers who understand each other this way and others who understand each other that way. Then there's this great herd, the "herd of independent minds."

The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress.

Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.

There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers.

Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn't remember it, but if they had done it, or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether.