We are told we must choose - the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new?

Sanity is a cozy lie.

The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.

Norman Mailer in his writings is ultimately more concerned with success than with danger; danger is only a means to success.

A lot of what I've written in criticism of my lust for virtue - my discovery that I've committed idolatry, making of the good an idol - is open to the charge of being still caught within the dialectic of idolatry. I've made a moral criticism of my moral consciousness. Meta-idolatry.

She felt herself needing more and more sleep. When she awoke in the morning, she thought of when she might lie down again - and when she would sleep. She started going to the movies.