“No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.”

“Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.”

“I had no systematic way of learning but proceeded like a quilt maker, a patch of knowledge here a patch there but lovingly knitted. I would hungrily devour the intellectual scraps and leftovers of the learned.”

“No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.”

“Dualism::In Ralph Ellison's Invisible ManI am outside of history. i wish i had some peanuts, it looks hungry there in the cage.i am outside of history. its hungrier than i thot.”