I have committed many sins in my life. This precise sin-the sin against poets-is without absolution.

We are all good friends. Friendship is what endures. Shared ideals, respect for the whole character of a human being.

A writer of books has to admit that film is the enemy, and that in my case I have been sleeping with the enemy.

It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.

It proposed that human beings, by the act of making witness, warranted times and places for their existence other than the time and place they were living through.

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

And so the ordinary unendurable torments we all experienced were indeed exceptional in the way they were absorbed in each heart.