History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.

Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.

Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.

Sometimes one word can recall a whole span of life.

Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire.

All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.

Writing is like carrying a fetus.