“I'll go on writing till the end of my days. I have been writing too long to stop.”

“Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning.”

“Looking backward through life, one can see the points of change like great locks through which one glides on a flood wave, so smoothly, on such irresistible power that one is hardly aware of any movement. But life is never the same again. One has gone through the lock and lives on a new level.”

“I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to.”

“How funny you are today New Yorklike Ginger Rogers in Swingtimeand St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the lefthere I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there stillaccepts me foolish and freeall I want is a room up thereand you in itand even the traffic halt so thick is a wayfor people to rub up against each otherand when their surgical appliances lockthey stay togetherfor the rest of the day (what a day)I go by to check a slide and I saythat painting’s not so bluewhere’s Lana Turnershe’s out eatingand Garbo’s backstage at the Meteveryone’s taking their coat offso they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchersand the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoesin little bagswho are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Ywhy notthe Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they wonand in a sense we’re all winningwe’re alivethe apartment was vacated by a gay couplewho moved to the country for funthey moved a day too sooneven the stabbings are helping the population explosionthough in the wrong countryand all those liars have left the UNthe Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interestnot that we need liquor (we just like it)and the little box is out on the sidewalknext to the delicatessenso the old man can sit on it and drink beerand get knocked off it by his wife later in the daywhile the sun is still shiningoh god it’s wonderfulto get out of bedand drink too much coffeeand smoke too many cigarettesand love you so much”

“I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life’s fabric, to the world’s beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!”

“I want to write. I have always wanted to write. I do not care it I am not good at it. I just want to try.”