“It kills me how these days everyone has clinical justification for their strangeness.”

“Oh, how wonderfully romantic of you. Romantics are really only in love with themselves.”

“History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth.”

“To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life.”

“Oh, sweetheart. What can anyone do? That's just the way things are. You really think you can change the world?”

“Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so many grievances in the world.”

“The instant before something comes into focus is more exciting than any sharp certainty. Photography, child, is about the passing of time. Capturing is the goal of literature. Timelessness is the t...”

“Every teenager is both a hero and a failure. When we become adults we have to choose where in the middle we’ll be.”

“The instant before something comes into focus is more exciting than any sharp certainty. Photography, child, is about the passing of time. Capturing is the goal of literature. Timelessness is the t...”

“Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it al...”

“The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.”