memory is to love what the saucer is to the cup.

Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard of what does not matter.

We are minor in everything but our passions.

Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.

... in nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.