Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.

Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

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 are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.