Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearances of the word, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot.

Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.

That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.

I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.

I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.

History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself.

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