“To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a speci...” — Delmore Schwartz Quote

“To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home.”

“Even paranoids have real enemies.”

“Sometimes even paranoids have enemies.”

“I had gone through a near-death experience, and that gives you an insight into how fleeting life is, and what's important.”

“I think that personal experience is very important, but certainly it shouldn't be a kind of shut-box and mirror-looking, narcissistic experience. I believe it should be relevant, and relevant to the larger things, the bigger things, such as Hiroshima and Dachau and so on.”

“I see the American experience as being defined by the immigrant paradigm of rupture and renewal: rupture with the old world, the old ways, and renewal of the self in a bright but difficult New World.”