We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.
I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they’re going.
Surprise is where creativity comes in.
The novel’s not organized like a screenplay. If you shot the novel, you’d have a twelve-hour movie.
The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.
Write what you love and love what you write.
But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.
Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe when it dies?
First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.
I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.
I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.
The first thing a writer should be is – excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it’d be better for his health.
I love the musical form of books. It’s a different way of doing things, it’s very beautiful. You’re able to sing things instead of saying them. So what the heck – why not do them?
I don’t talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.
So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily.
Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.
Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.
The important thing is to be in love with something.
I don’t decide. My secret self decides. I just go with my subconscious. If it wants to do a poem, I do a poem, and if it wants to do a play, I do a play. So I’m not in charge, I’m not in control.
And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.