All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.

Anyhow they’re always exceptions. But most women, their only relationship to a man is having. Either owning or being owned.

When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.

Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.

The model of modern Western civilization is the virus: the pure bit of information, which turns its environment into endless reproductions of itself.

I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them.

Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can’t be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the Solitude of the Author’s Life, and lock themselves into cork-lined rooms or droop around in bars in order to whine better. But although most writing is done in solitude, I believe that it is done, like all the arts, for an audience. That is to say, with an audience. All the arts are performance arts, only some of them are sneakier about it than others.