The natural role of the twentieth-century man is anxiety. - Norman Mailer

Having reshaped my words with an intensity of feeling I had not known before, I could not understand why others were not overcome with my sense of life, of sex, and of sadness.

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.

There was the old myth of divine intervention. You blasphemed, and a lightning bolt struck you. That was a little steep too. If punishment is at all proportionate to the offense, then power becomes watered. The only way you generate the proper attitude of awe and obedience is through immense and disproportionate power.