Fiction does not invent out of a vacuum, but it invents; and what it invents is, first, the fabric and cadence of language, and then a slant of idea that sails out of these as a fin lifts from the sea.

Paradise is only for those who have already been there.

Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.

The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: its the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance.

The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.

In real life wishing, divorced from willing, is sterile and begets nothing.