Anais Nin gave me my most original, or so I thought, creation. As I read Incest, I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anais in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt.

I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ('I am not my own subject,' I used to say with icy superiority). [1]

I used to be able to summon up scenes at will, but now aging memory is so busy weeding its own garden that, promiscuously, it pulls up roses as well as crabgra…

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Word…

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper-whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

Ainsi presque tout est imitation. L'idee des Lettres persanes est prise de celle de l'Espion turc. Le Boiardo a imite le Pulci, l'Arioste a imite le Boiardo. L…

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.