The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.

One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.

Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures

Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Quotation is a method of appropriation which is invincible, I think. It's not a procedure which displeases me, contrary to recycling.