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

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 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.

It was who they were, and it was who they always would be. They would remain forever in lust and forever in love, for theirs was a love that transcended body and mind. Theirs was a love of the soul.

Voice your opinion and let the confidence in you stand still

Living this long's not as wonderful as people think. I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old and deaf and creaky.

I am very familiar with Hungary, because I grew up in Romania, which borders it.

A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.

Look for Buddha outside your own mind, and Buddha becomes the devil.

(after listening to people gripe and complain just smile and remember) Crows can’t hang with eagles.

I think Bible principles are principles for life.

It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own.

Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong.