There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.

That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.

What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work?

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.