I do a so-called trip into myself: I sit down at the piano and the melody might start to evolve from my playing or then I might start to sing it.
Kafka is still unrecognized. He thought he was a comic writer.
I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love.
There are things in American culture that want to wipe the class distinction. Blue jeans. Ready-made clothes. Coca-Cola.
To be an American (unlike being English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history.
Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.
The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.
A boo is a lot louder than a cheer. If you have 10 people cheering and one person booing, all you hear is the booing.
Grantland Rice can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.
For 15 years, I've been playing the same character-which is myself-and I'm bored with 'myself'.
Usually when I put together a book like this Death-Ray hardcover or that Ghost World special edition, then I have to reread it and see if there is anything I want to change or any re-coloring I want to do. That's when I'm faced with the actual work. When I'm working, I'm too close to it. I'm sort of inside, and I can't see it at all. So when I have that experience of rereading it years later, it's jarring.