I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.

When you open a book,” the sentimental library posters said, “anything can happen.” This was so. A book of fiction was a bomb. It was a land mine you wanted to go off. You wanted it to blow your whole day. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of books were duds. They had been rusting out of everyone’s way for so long that they no longer worked. There was no way to distinguish the duds from the live mines except to throw yourself at them headlong, one by one.

At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.

Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.