America is a nation of experts without roots; we are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot take a step, and… - Norman Mailer

Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Eleanor Roosevelt, fine, precise, hand-worked like ivory. Her voice was almost attractive … One had the impression of a lady who was finally becoming a woman, which is to say that she was just a little bitchy about it all; nice bitchy, charming, it had a touch of art to it, but it made one wonder if she were not now satisfying the last passion of them all, which was to become physically attractive, for she was better-looking than she had ever been.