The celebrity never sees himself. I have some idea what I'm doing on that stage; above all, I have some idea what sustains me on that stage. But the celebrity is not exactly Jimmy, though he comes out of Jimmy and Jimmy nourishes that, too. I can see now, with hindsight, that I would've had to become a celebrity in order to survive. A boy like me with all his handicaps, real and fancied, could not have survived in obscurity. I can say that it would have had to happen this way, though I could not see it coming.

You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble.

When the South has trouble with its Negroes - when the Negroes refuse to remain in their 'place' - it blames 'outside agitators' and 'Northern interference.' W…

I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness. In the church in which I was raised you were supposed to bear witness to the truth. Now, later on, you…

Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.

And then I went over to the concession stand to get some tea and I ran into Fiona Apple, and I was like, 'Who do you think you are, Fiona Snapple?'

The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The…