I don't think that everyone should have a philosophical answer to any given question. There are things that need to be done.

Every artist, writers included, have an ethics and an aesthetics, whether they can formulate them or not. I happen to think that it is good to be able to formulate - it is good to know what you are doing and to be able to talk about it.

I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat.

An unjust world represented as harmonious is a political position.

I don't like having a teaching job - office hours and conferences and committees and bosses and all that - but I tend to enjoy teaching, and I design the course in such a way that there'll be pleasure in that.

Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever.

I spotted a can in the corner whose red label read SADNESS. Was there so much of it they could can it and sell it? A bolt of pain went through my intestines before I realized that it was not SADNESS but SARDINES.