Footnote: 79) The anchor is gigantic and must weigh a hundred tons, and -- delightfully -- it really is anchor-shaped, i.e. the same shape as anchors in tattoos.

She wanted only tall smooth bottles whose labels spoke of Proof.

Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

I'm screaming for help and everybody's acting as if I'm singing Ethel Merman covers.

To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.

Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express really invoke. This can be tricky.