Faint equivalents can sometimes be found ... . Or it can be rendered obliquely-an adolescent's mental image of his or her parents making love, which must be something on the order of crocodiles mating.

The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do.

The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.

Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that -- one need merely look out of the window, for example.

Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.