I have no doubt that 'On the Road' is a Great American Novel. But I'm also certain my students will do fine without it.

Every gift is held by two hands: the one that gives, and the one that takes away.

When I first read 'On the Road,' it helped me figure out how to live against the grain. Now I wonder how to be subversive when the subversive has become mainstream.

In the time it takes American literary titan William H. Gass to write a novel, other artists have been born, completed their life's work and died. That may be an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

Discipline is what makes a writer. If writing was like lifting weights, then I'd look like Mr. Universe. Write every day. Give the Muse a chance to get to know you.

I should be writing a poem every morning but I'm not.

Oh, man, why is this the life? Why is it? Why is one rich and the other poor? Why is one black and the other white?

Mapmaker mapmakermake me a mapone to one scale, without a single gap.Map every rock, every thought, every treeand erase all the territory.

When the storm rips you to pieces, you get to decide how to put yourself back together again.

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

Anything less would not have been worthy of me. Anything more would not have been possible.

If everything is a dream, don't wake me.

Shareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.

Commerce is a form of warfare.

I just tell people what they already know but are afraid to admit to themselves.

The effects of infantile instruction are, like those of syphilis, never completely cured.

When clever people ask me where I get a poem, I despair.