“And why? Is our genius only in our wombs? Can we not write books and create learned scholarship and perform music and provide philosophical models for the betterment of mankind?”

“A stydy today of the products of the animated cartoon industry of the twenties, thirties and forties would yield the following theology: 1. People are animals. 2. The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain. 3. Life is antagonistic to the living. 4. The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched, burned, bombed, and plucked for music. 5. The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart are destroyed by their own cunning. 6. The small are tortured by the large and the large destroyed by their own momentum. 7. We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.”

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

“Grandmamma had been the last connection to our past. I had understood her as some referent moral authority to whom we paid no heed, but by whose judgments we measured our waywardness.”

“I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them.”

“There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.”

“Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. ”