And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky—so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.

There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty-unless she is wed to something more meaningful-is always superficial

When I'm writing, I am concentrating almost wholly on concrete detail: the color a room is painted, the way a drop of water rolls off a wet leaf after a rain.

I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.

I'd been assured, at age 21 or so, by a well-known editor who saw the first part of The Secret History in what was basically its final form, that it would never be published because "no woman has ever written a successful novel from a male point of view."

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.