I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.

I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.

You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.

Your only shame is to have shame.

I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.

You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modernink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn.

He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.