He looks about the room at the few sticks of furniture, at the dirty bed sheets and the wash basin with the dirty water still in it, and he says: I am a slave! Every day he says it, not once, but a do...
Every time I pass the concierge's window and catch the full icy impact of her glance I have an insane desire to throttle all the birds in creation. At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop...
Deep in the blood the pull of paradise. The beyond. It must have all started with the navel. They cut the umbilical cord, give you a slap in the ass, and presto! you're out in the world, adrift. You l...
At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of lovejust enough to feed the birds.
A world without hope, but no despair
Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown...
The wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of reality is falling to tatters. The grand whorehouse which they have made of life requires no decoration; it is essential that only...
The great incestuous wish is to flow on, one with time, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and now. A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by words and paralyzed by thought.
Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I bre...
No matter what you touch and you wish to know about, you end up in a sea of mystery. You see there’s no beginning or end, you can go back as far as you want, forward as far as you want, but you never...
Naturally, I said. You’re always the same person. You don’t change from one milieu to another. You’re honest and open. You could get along anywhere with any group or class or race. But most people are...
My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.
Most of the young men of talent whom I have met in this country give one the impression of being somewhat demented. Why shouldn't they? They are living amidst spiritual gorillas, living with food and...
It was just the human fatality of things, a cancer worse than blame, or hate or love.
In the beginning was the Word... Whatever this was, the Word, disease or creation, it was still running rampant; it would run on and on, outstrip time and space, outlast the angels, unseat God, unhook...
I think someday you're going to be a great writer, he said. But he added maliciously, first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only...
I suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book and I was in love with it. If I had had the money, as Gide ha...
I am thinking of one woman and the rest is blotto. I say I am thinking of her, but the truth is I am dying a stellar death. I am lying there like a sick star waiting for the light to go out. Years ago...
I am a free manand I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without co...
Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer m...