When I first read 'On the Road,' it helped me figure out how to live against the grain. Now I wonder how to be subversive when the subversive has become mainstream.

Every gift is held by two hands: the one that gives, and the one that takes away.

I have no doubt that 'On the Road' is a Great American Novel. But I'm also certain my students will do fine without it.

In the time it takes American literary titan William H. Gass to write a novel, other artists have been born, completed their life's work and died. That may be an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

Discipline is what makes a writer. If writing was like lifting weights, then I'd look like Mr. Universe. Write every day. Give the Muse a chance to get to know you.

I should be writing a poem every morning but I'm not.

Oh, man, why is this the life? Why is it? Why is one rich and the other poor? Why is one black and the other white?

He cries. 'Please! I don't want to die.'I lean over. My hair smothers him.'Then you should never have been born, ' I say.

The pitcher that goes too often to the well is broken at last.

Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.

I can feel the knee or the foot. The baby is starting to get heavy, and it’s a really incredible feeling. I’m so grateful I get to experience this.

People are incapable of stereotyping you; you stereotype yourself because you're the one who accepts roles that put you in this rut or in this stereotype

Comics? Honestly, that's more a matter of nostalgia for me. I think most of that energy has gone to my love of literature, and my love of film...

I have a bad habit of playing little emotional games with men. When they date me it's cool in the beginning, we do our thing in the first month, and then I send them on a rollercoaster ride to hell.

I'm a bisexual; I get it maybe twice a year.

If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture.

The cup that went down under has now come up again.