Worse than madness. Sanity.

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.

I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.

If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

I don't think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.