The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of ours.

To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.

as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness. You are in the country where you make up the rules, the laws. You are both dictator and obedient populace. It is a country nobody has ever explored before. It is up to you to make the maps, to build the cities. Nobody else in the world can do it, or ever could do it, or ever will be able to do it again.

What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.

While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.