There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.

I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self the more you do.

A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows "This is I." An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, "This is not I." Maud knew this neat division represented an over-simplification. The doll-mask she saw had nothing to do with her, nothing.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.