Date of birth: 1932-03-18
Date of death: 2009-01-27
Quotes number: 49
Nationality: American
Profession: Novelist
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.
A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.
An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.
Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.
Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.
Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.
But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.
