I've never met an American who wanted to build an empire.

Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus...or off the bus.

My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called 'The Southern Planter.' He didn't think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I'd seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.

don't just describe an emotion, arouse it, make them experience it, by manipulating the symbol of the emotion, and sometimes we have to come into awareness through the back door.

I wrote a number of pieces in the year 1966 that were so bad that, although I'm a great collector of my own pieces, I have never collected them.

They were...well, Beautiful People! - not 'students', 'clerks', 'salesgirls', 'executive trainees' - Christ, don't give me your occupation-game labels! We are Beautiful People, ascendant from your robot junkyard.

Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.