It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.

Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.

In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.

Shakespearean words, foreign words, slang and dialect and made-up phrases from kids on the street corner: English has room for them all. And writers - not just literary writers, but popular writers as well - breathe air into English and keep it lively by making it their own, not by adhering to some style manual that gets handed out to college Freshmen in a composition class.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

I hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?