I have never cared much for people. Most of them are cowards, conformists, muddleheads, moneygrubbers, and they infect each other.

Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases.

The world is a never-ending cross-reference.

She had nothing to do all day ... but did it with the greatest possible speed.

I find it unbearable to need a body in order to exist.

Through men ... you learn how the world is. Through women you learn what it is.

Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending.

As far as he could see, the world was moving, in an orderly capitalist fashion, toward a logical, perhaps provisional, perhaps permanent, end.

Conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say.

Man is a sad mammal that combs its hair.

I am a hindrance to the world, and the world is a hindrance to me.

Writing a novel is agony.

The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: 'the Sufis are not merchants'.

Oh, beloved, and there is nothing but shadowswhere you accompany me in your dreamsand tell me the hour of light.

I've always been a poor sport and a sore loser...any other behavior might encourage a repeat performance

It's the whole not the detail that matters.

My parents were willing to let me follow my nose, do what I wanted to do, and they supported my interest by buying the books that I wanted for birthdays and Christmas, almost always poetry books.

But none of that kept me from picturing what a tsunami might look like if it did rise up and roar toward my little boat like some watery blue version of the Great Wall of China.

We grow hostile to many an artist or writer, not because we finally come to see he has deceived us, but because he thought no subtler means were required to ensnare us.

When something is 'new and improved', which is it? If it's new, then there has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, then there must have been something before it.

I'm not really a job-type person, where I go do a nine-to-give. I have to be with the work at all times and experiencing it.