For me to write I have to be, a, alone, and b, know that nobody is going to question me. I write the way a thief steals; it's a little covert.

In a way Winter is the real Spring - the time when the inner things happen, the resurgence of nature.

To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first.

I know the mistake I am making. I see the exits in life.

I'm a tuning fork, tense and twanging all the time.

jealousy is the direct result of self-betrayal.

fear is a dreadful drawback because it stops us living in the moment.