After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

The way to learn about a writer is to read the text. Or texts.

Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to art and spend their days by choice in the thick of it.

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.

These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.

The interior life is often stupid.

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time.