There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

In novels, I said, people are transfigured by love. They’re elevated, made different, lifted out of their ordinariness…It’s not so much to ask, I said. I just want love to live up to its publicity.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.