Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair.

Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. Remember that. One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. I was struck by that and meant to try it, but knew I shouldn’t waste the milk.

We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do-we do it all the time.

I read a book called The Art of Loving. A lot of things seemed clear while I was reading it but afterwards I went back to being more or less the same.

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.