John Irving once told me he doesn't start a novel until he knows the last sentence. I said, 'My God, Irving, isn't that like working in a factory?'

Get yourself in that extreme state of being next to madness. You should always write with an erection. Even if you're a woman.

When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death

Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon any more.

The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were traffic cops, at best. They might direct you through a busy intersection, but they wouldn't follow you home and park your car.

Meditation... dissolves the mind. It erases itself. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass.

There are essential and inessential insanities. The later are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.