The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally … - James Baldwin

I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years

I felt so aimless — like a tennis ball, bouncing, bouncing — I began to wonder where I'd land.

One writes out of one thing only — one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.