47 Quotes by Harry Mathews

I think situations are more important than plot and character.

My Life in CIA is the first time that I've ever written a story in my own name.

Well, my relationship to America at the time I left was very limited.

What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.

I thought Cheever was magnificent and that if I could write like him that would be the best I could do. And then I realized that what I really wanted to write had nothing to do with what he was doing.

It's true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for whatever reasons, I found the company of others, especially other boys, quite terrifying and upsetting.

Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

What I wanted to do and what I needed to do was something entirely different, and through reading Roussel I learned that I could do what I wanted all on my own and that I didn't have to rely on what had actually happened in my somewhat limited life and reading.

Since then I've found many other places in the U.S. where I feel absolutely comfortable - most recently, Key West, where I've been very, very happy.