I haven't had a single moment of terror since they told me [I was dying]. My only regret is to die four pages too soon. If I can finish, then I'm quite happy to go.
A writer helps to show you things you knew but didn't know you knew.
Metaphor is embodied in language.
The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in.
Ideals jump across the hierarchies of the printed word.
That vision of a common culture is now simply a remote wistfulness.