Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.

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

That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that's become my enemy because that's what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything.

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

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

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?

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.