"He carried his childhood like a hurt warm bird held to his middle-aged breast."

"Diverting the internal traffic between the Writer as Angel of Light and the Writer as Hustler is that scribbling child in a grown-up body wondering if anybody is listening."

"Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty."