“I got through my childhood in a delirium of literary exaltations.”

“Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.”

“Result of self-consciousness: audience and actor are the same. I live my life as a spectacle for myself, for my own edification. I live my life but I don't live in it. The hoarding instinct in human relations.”

“I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names.Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.”

“My desire to write is connected with my homosexuality. I need the identity as a weapon, to match the weapon that society has against me. It doesn’t justify my homosexuality. But it would give me — I feel — a license.”

“I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.”

“My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.”