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

For years they have been using the role of 'sex object' as a cover while they spied out the land.

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

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

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.

Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.