American Quotes

I can't speak on behalf of the show. I'm not a creator; I'm just a pawn.

Dad said that he was prouder of me than he'd ever been when I came out.

By the time I came out, that kind of stopped it. The bullying stopped when I claimed myself and proved that I wasn't afraid. A lot of it was when I was hiding when I was younger.

A lot of my friends are club people. It's not me. It's funny to represent that, because it's not me. I don't fit into a gay club setting. It's just ironic that I represent that somehow.

I wasn't being bullied at school at this point. I had a group of friends, and I was isolated because I wasn't communicating with my parents. I wasn't telling them what I was going through.

I actually have more respect for people who are in the closet. You end up exposing so much of yourself because you have to talk about your sexual life. You shouldn't have to talk about it.

I love my parents. Coming out to them was sort of coming out to myself. I educated them, and I wanted our relationship to keep growing. I wanted them to be a part of my life still. I wanted to be able to share with them what I was going through.

We get more dangerous as we accumulate knowledge, and that's both a sadness and something to control, try to learn to live with, make terms with.

Three days in a city now and I'm quite flipped. There's too much noise. I just can't do with it.

I don't want to wear my compositional tools on my sleeve.

Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.

I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.

I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.

I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.

I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.

I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.

I do have trouble with titles.

I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself.

I can write anywhere.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.

Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.

Your kids inevitably want to move where they had their vacations when they were younger.

So when I made some money, I didn't have any idea how one handled such a situation because no one in our family ever had any money.

I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.