If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.

Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby.

If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he has shifty eyes and funny shoes and he won't talk about anything except the injustice of the United States income tax structure toward people with fluctuating income, or how to breed Black Angus cows, or something.

What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.