The stigma of self-inflicted death is for some people a hateful blot that demands erasure at all costs.
The weather of Depression is unmodulated, its light a brownout.
For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write – like myself – college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.
A great book should leave you with many experiences.
Nonfiction writers are second-class citizens, the Ellis Island of literature. We just can’t quite get in. And yes, it pisses me off.
Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.
In the absence of hope we must still struggle to survive, and so we do-by the skin of our teeth.
My life and work have been far from free of blemish, and so I think it would be unpardonable for a biographer not to dish up the dirt.
In Paris on a chilling evening late in October of 1985 I first became fully aware that the struggle with the disorder in my mind – a struggle which had engaged me for several months – might have a fatal outcome.
I felt myself no longer a husk but a body with some of the body’s sweet juices stirring again. I had my first dream in many months, confused but to this day imperishable, with a flute in it somewhere, and a wild goose, and a dancing girl.
Style comes only have long, hard practice and writing.
Let your love flow out on all living things.
This was not judgment day – only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.
We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.
I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.
I think it’s unfortunate to have critics for friends.
Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.
I felt the exultancy of a man just released from slavery and ready to set the universe on fire.
Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word – life.
Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.