Foucault was the one person I met in France that I could talk to. He was a mensch. You know whether you agree with him or not because you know what he is saying.

There are things in American culture that want to wipe the class distinction. Blue jeans. Ready-made clothes. Coca-Cola.

Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.

I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love.

I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.

Gertrude Stein really thought of Hemingway as frail. He almost married Stein.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.

I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis.

My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.

The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.

Practice self-compassion and experience the priceless feeling of emotional safety.

Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little.

There's something very romantic about self-destruction and sabotaging your life, and taking a hammer to it.

I did one year at NYU, and I'd love to go back there someday

When a performer doesn't get nervous, that is when you have to give up.

There is no I in Team, unless you count the vertical part of the T.

The duty to be alive is the same as the duty to become oneself, to develop into the individual one potentially is.

At the very point of vulnerability is where the surrender takes place-that is where the god enters. The god comes through the wound.

We don't have to apologize for American exceptionalism or western values.

Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.