There is such an animal as a nonstylist, only they’re not writers – they’re typists.
Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don’t put them on paper.
Most people who become suddenly famous overnight will find that they lose practically eighty percent of their friends. Your old friends just can’t stand it for some reason.
I’ve been working, working, working, and you know, sometimes you look back at your work and you see that it just isn’t any good.
Any work of art, provided it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.
In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist.
Actually, I think friendship and love are exactly the same thing.
The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His work means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.
Work is the only device I know of.
Of course people couldn’t help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit. So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them on.
I’ve got something inside of me, peasantlike and stubborn, and I’m in it till the end of the race.
Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds: I can’t wait.
Rusty thinks I should smoke marijuana, and I did for a while, but it only makes me giggle.
A boy has to peddle his book.
When you’ve got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas.
You can do films for the fun of it, or the thrill of it, but certain films you can’t do unless there’s something driving you, something you have a passion for that will pull you through.
Norman Mailer thinks William Burroughs is a genius, which I think is ludicrous beyond words. I don’t think William Burroughs has an ounce of talent.
Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; theyre enraptured by their navels and confined by a view that ends with their own toes.
Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.
My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely.