I try to keep my artistic opinions not so much "to myself" but "on myself."

I'm not a big fan of my books going on cross-country road trips. They get arrogant and, next thing, start aspiring to become 'large-print' books. I say, let them stay home and be regular small-print books.

In the reason that the contrast between the absolute and the relative is so terrible is because we believe so fully in ourselves as permanent, continuous, and central. I feel insane saying this, but if one weren't so deluded about the permanent reality of the self, a lot of this pain would actually lessen.

Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.

What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.

So here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny, and I don't quite know what to do with it.