Professors of literature collect books the way a ship collects barnacles, without seeming effort.

Everyone likes to talk shop, which is the most interesting talk in the world, in the beginning.

maturity ... is letting things happen.

You can flush my ashes down the toilet, for all I care.

One hires lawyers as on hires plumbers, because one wants to keep one's hands off the beastly drains.

What marks a writer is this: until she - or he, of course - writes down whatever happened, turns it into a story, it hasn't really happened, it hasn't shape, form, reality.

One cannot make up stories; one can only retell in new ways the stories one has already heard.