“Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.”

My hole is warm and full of light.

I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.

To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

The truth is the light and the light is the truth.

Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.

Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form…without light I am not only invisible but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death…the truth is the light and light is the truth.

I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied

The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.

And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.

When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.

The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.