Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself.
Life is no way to treat an animal.
I now believe that the only way in which Americans can rise above their ordinariness, can mature sufficiently to rescue themselves and to help rescue their planet, is through enthusiastic intimacy with works of their own imagination.
He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.
I've got at least one tiny corner of the universe I can make just the way I want it ...
... there is this feeling that I have a destiny far away from the shallow and preposterous posing that is our life ...
Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.
The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
One problem people have is that they lie to themselves. Rarely is talent enough. You have to find ways to make yourself standout. You do so by playing to your strengths and making people aware of those strengths.