An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.

I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.

I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can't understand, can and can't accept.

Things are not what they seem.