“Nobody's happy. What's happy? Happiness is over when the lights come on”

“How could I possibly NOT be disappointed by what I would find? Nothing had ever met my expectation, since nothing could compete with my doctoring imagination, my pathetic compulsion to make the wor...”

“It took so long to find you...and now I don't want it to change. I want it all set in amber. I want us and nobody else in the most selfish way you can imagine. I can't help it--I'm old-fashioned. I...”

“I know I can't tell you what it's like to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not. It's not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity.”

“I couldn't writeor wouldn't write, at any rateunable to face the grueling self-scrutiny that fiction demands”

“Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory: some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth.”

“But youre out of another world old kid You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.”

“[Poem: Slates of Grey]Sullen faces like slates of greyWhat Id seen on a walk today.Bodies rushing bodies boltingTime for life a disregarding.Money to make and to grow oldWhat about the hands to hol...”

“I would describe the distinction between city and landscape like this: cities tend to excite and agitate me; they make me feel big or small, self-confident, proud, curious, excited, tense, annoyed....”

“Nothing forces us to knowWhat we do not want to knowExcept pain”

“Doesn't it seem that it is always by chance that these things happen, or is it because of the generosity of a shared knowledge of suffering that allows for it?”

“Wisdom is not making life any harder than it has to be.”

“We speak the truth because we live in truth.”

“There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.”

“But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.”