“I drank a little California Mountain Red at home and thought--why not--wherever you turn someone is shouting give me liberty of I give you death. Perfectly sensible, thing-owning, Church-fearing neighbours flop their hands over their ears at the sound of a siren to keep fallout from taking hold of their internal organs. You have to be cockeyed to love, and blind in order to look out the window at your own ice-cold street.”

“Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.”

“In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.”

“The word career is a divisive word. It's a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.”

“Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.”

“All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest it seems is an interest in life good bad or peculiar.”

“I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.”

“All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest it seems is an interest in life good bad or peculiar.”

“We are in the hands of men whose power and wealth have separated them from the reality of daily life and from the imagination. We are right to be afraid.”

“Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.”

“The only thing you should have to do is find work you love to do. And I can't imagine living without having loved a person. A man, in my case. It could be a woman, but whatever. I think, what I always tell kids when they get out of class and ask, 'What should I do now?' I always say, 'Keep a low overhead. You're not going to make a lot of money.' And the next thing I say: 'Don't live with a person who doesn't respect your work.' That's the most important thing—that's more important than the money thing. I think those two things are very valuable pieces of information.”