Stanley Elkin

When I was growing up, we had a bungalow in New Jersey which we visited in the summers. Everybody in that small community was named Feldman and was either an aunt or cousin of mine. I just found it comfortable to use the name Feldman.

Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism.

I've always been terrified of dying, always. It was a concern of mine long before it had to be.

What a writer's message is is totally unimportant. Either he is agreeing with life by affirming, or he is saying life is just a bowl of wormwood.