The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone, don't you?

Oh you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

All creative work, all life in a sense, is a cri de coeur.

The nervous system of any age or nation is its creative workers, its artists. And if that nervous system is profoundly disturbed by its environment, the work it produces will inescapably reflect the disturbances, sometimes obliquely and sometimes with violent directness.

No, truth is something desperate, an' she's got it. Believe me, it's something desperate, an' she's got it.

I try to work every day because you have no refuge but writing. When you're going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.