Harold Brodkey

“I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife.”

“Innocence is a kind of insanity.”

“Dying is a very difficult assignment.”

“The first sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act great.”

“You can't be a good writer without being a good thinker.”

“A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”

“To be a giant and keep quiet about it is a fate worse than death.”

“It is a serious thing to be a writer.”

“It is part of the business of life to be dangerous.”

“My sentences are very aggressive. They have nouns and verbs.”

“The story of a life is a very informal ghost story.”

“I work from a deep sense of patriotism.”

“I want to be loved. I want to be famous. I want to be rich. I want to be a great writer.”

“Death is a graduation. When we're done with life, we leave it.”