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

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

Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.

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

The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.

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

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