In the final analysis, style is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.

In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is.

Norman Mailer records in his recent essays and public appearances his perfecting of himself as a virile instrument of letters; he is perpetually in training, getting ready to launch himself from his own missile pad into a high, beautiful orbit; even his failures may yet be turned to successes.

If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.

I feel inauthentic at a party. ... Going to a party is a 'low' activity - the authentic self is compromised, fragmented - one plays 'roles.' One isn't fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn't (can't) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn't literally tell lies.

The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a Surrealist taste.