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.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

Justice? You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

If you want to make a million you don't have to understand money, what you have to understand is people's fears about money

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.

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