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I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

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In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry than prose, but now it i...more

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Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that mad...more

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Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal

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For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is ...more

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So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or...more

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Language is not the lowborn, gawky servant of thought and feeling; it is need, thought, feeling, and perception itself. The shape of sentences, the so...more

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If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless, there is an answer. I write because...more

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It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play — the product of...more

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As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.

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The responsibility of any science, any pure pursuit, is ultimately to itself, and on this point physics, philosophy, and poetry unite with Satan in th...more