Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody.

I don't think you can talk about progress in art - movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it's a horizontal line, not a vertical one.

The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do... Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how.

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.

Any genuine work of art generates new work.

I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.

The death of God left the angels in a strange position.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

The privileged classes can afford psychoanalysis and whiskey. Whereas all we get is sermons and sour wine. This is manifestly unfair. I protest, silently.

I refused David Letterman's proposal of marriage for obvious reasons, but thanks for asking.

The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.

A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.

Major labels limit you, but I also learned my tricks from getting around that.

I'm the Lord of the Dance! F-k Michael Flatley, it's me!

They use force, to make you do, what the deciders, have decided you must do.

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.

Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.

Envy, the attendant of the empty mind.