The work of a writer, his continuing work, depends for breath of life on a certain privacy of heart.

All good art is an indiscretion.

A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.

I think time is a merciless thing. I think life is a process of burning oneself out and time is the fire that burns you.

When I was fourteen, my father decided to initiate me into the ways of manhood, and took me to the local whorehouse. The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin' orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids.

Somebody said once or wrote, once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks!

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.