The recent Dictionary of Occupational Titles lists over twenty thousand specialized professions in America; being a millionaire is not one of them.
The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.
The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.
And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have.
I collect human relationships very much the way others collect fine art.
Had it been possible for me to fix the plane permanently in the sky, to defy the winds and clouds and all the forces pushing it upward and pulling it earthward, I would have willingly done so. I would have stayed in my seat with my eyes closed, all s...
Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.
There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.
A trait which differentiated New York from European cities was the incredible freedom and ease in which life, including sexual life, could be carried on, on many levels.
As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.
I do like to live in other people's homes. I enjoy being a guest. I am an inexpensive guest. When one lives in another's home he can enter into the psychic kingdom of that person.
I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.
Persons who have been homeless carry within them a certain philosophy of life which makes them apprehensive about ownership.
It is not sex by itself that interests me, but its particular role in American consciousness, and in my own life.
If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one.
Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.
Banks introduced the installment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States.
A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.
There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.
There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant.
