“If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?”

“People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on.”

“Ah men,
why do you want
all this attention?
I can write poems for myself, make
love to a doorknob if absolutely
necessary. What do you have to offer me
I can't find otherwise
except humiliation? Which I no longer
need.”

“Sometimes you fantasize that people who are really up-there and rich and living it up have something you don't have, that their things must be better than your things because they have more money than you. But they drink the same Cokes and eat the same hot dogs and wear the same ILGWU clothes and see the same TV shows and the same movies. Rich people can't see a sillier version of w:Truth or Consequences, or a scarier version of w:The Exorcist. You can get just as revolted as they can—you can have the same nightmares. All of this is really American.”

“I can imagine no greater bliss than to lie about, reading novels all day.”

“To be an atheist you have to have ten thousand times more imagination than if you are a religious fundamentalist. You must take the responsibility to acquire information, digest and use it to understand what you can.”

“The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.”

“The more knowledge you have, the more imagination. The more you can imagine, the more you will be capable to explore the universe.”

“Don’t simply settle for what your parents had. You can go further than that. You can do more, have more, be more.”

“Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.”