What I expect from writers-and from myself as a writer-is to articulate a complex view of things. To incite us to be more compassionate. To orchestrate our mourning. And to celebrate ecstasy.

It's not that you make up your ideas to justify your temperament but that it's the temperament first.

Talking like touching. Writing like punching somebody.

In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.

In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.

There is a terrible, mean American resentment toward a writer who tries to do many things.

I was fascinated by quotations and lists. And then I noticed that other people were fascinated by quotations and lists: people as different as Borges and Walter Benjamin, Novalis and Godard.