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.

I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

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.