“If their work becomes indistinguishable, it’s a sign they were on the right track. They had found a formula for sublimity, and their duty was to repeat it as often as possible.”
“Just as the gospels and Pauline writings were the Bible of Christianity in the past, so 'Leaves of Grass' would be the Bible of Cosmic civilization in the future”
“Baldwin was the first of his kind, and perhaps the last we shall see for some time: the Negro writer made a celebrity and thrust into the national political dialogue.”
“Baldwin’s work opened up the world for me; it was also precisely because it did do that that it could, if not closely watched, overwhelm any perception I might eventually develop about it and the way we live now.”
"Kerouac was one of those men in whom the proportions are mixed just a bit differently than in the rest of us. In him that youthful lunging after sensation was wider, deeper, fuller than in most men"
"Nothing quite like the beat demimonde exists anymore, not with the same literary élan, the same desperate vitality. Being a poor New York writer or painter has become too expensive — or too crushing — to permit such animated congregation"
“I’m a good novelist and I’ll get better. I’ve found my calling and if I have my way I’ll be turning out books for the next half-century, books that will blow people away. But right now all I want is to be read.”
"Like a number of other black women writers, I have made it a point to speak of our 'tradition,' yet I know that no such tradition is assumed by the rest of the world, primarily because our books have not been read or taught"
