That sort of reception - where everything is assimilated to the world of celebrity - makes me dream of becoming a more recalcitrant, harder to assimilate writer.

A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.

All my life I've been looking for someone intelligent to talk to.

The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.

Mad people = People who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.

Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents pots and pans - the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum.

Thinking, writing are ultimately questions of stamina.