Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.

I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.

That's the trouble with you sad-city types: a place has to be miserable and dull as ditchwater before you believe it's real.

If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.

Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.

Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.

I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I found it really hard to have one extreme opinion a month. I don't know how these columnists have two or three ideas a week; I was having difficulty having 12 things to say a year.