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.

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

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.

I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.

When I am with you, there is nowhere else I'd rather be. And I am a person who always wants to be somewhere else.

A language Older Than Words

Through logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.

If we were made in his image then call us by our names. Most intellects do not believe in god but they fear us just the same

Liberty, whether natural, civil, or political, is the lawful power in the individual to exercise his corresponding rights. It is greatly favored in law.

I was a fat little kid with a speech impediment. I used to get beat up, not just picked on.

He looked blank. “He’s the one who’s been doing the magic against us?” “Duh,” I said. “Doona be ‘duh’ing me, lass,” he growled, his burr thickening.

All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritualized vision.

Education is the great American adventure, the world's most colossal democratic experiment.

If you don't like an idea, put another idea against it! If you use your fist against an idea that you don't like, you only prove how horribly primitive you are!