the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.

Dialogue must appear realistic without being so. Actual realism-the lifting, as it were, of passages from a stenographer's take-down of a 'real life' conversation-would be disruptive. Of what? Of the illusion of the novel. In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.

Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style.

There's something so showy about desperation, it takes hard wits to see it's a grandiose form of funk.

[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.

Someone soon to start on a journey is always a little holy.

Exhibitionism and a nervous wish for concealment, for anonymity, thus battle inside the buyer of any piece of clothing.