“not every boy thrown to the wolves becomes a hero.”

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”

“Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.”

“I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.”

“Indeed, if I have yet to join the hosts of the suicides, it is because (fatigue apart) I find it no meaningfuller to drown myself than to go on swimming.”

“In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.”

“Nobody knew how to be what they were right. ”