I read in order to write. I read out of obsession with writing.

I would distinguish between a visitor and a pilgrim: both will come to a place and go away again, but a visitor arrives, a pilgrim is restored. A visitor passes through a place; the place passes through the pilgrim.

The engineering is secondary to the vision.

In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it.

very bright teeth as big and orderly as piano keys.

Much of the academy on the humanities side, English departments in particular, no longer write what can pass for normal English.

The butterfly lures us not only because he is beautiful, but because he is transitory. The caterpillar is uglier, but in him we can regard the better joy of becoming.