My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?

It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.

The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either.

I would like to explain that I consider prayer above all an act of gratitude for existence.

The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.