The ordinary is the divine.

Every writer aspires to recognition , and it comes entirely privately, without public fanfare, each time a piece of work is judged worthy of publication.

Language makes culture, and we make a rotten culture when we abuse words.

What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.

Invention despoils observations, insinuation invalidates memory. A stewpot of bad habits, all of it - so that imaginative writers wind up, by and large, a shifty crew, sunk in distortion, misrepresentation, illusion, imposture, fakery.

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

Old saws have no teeth.