Art is a kind of artificial memory and the pain which attends all serious art is a sense of that factitiousness.

To be a complete victim may be another source of power.

I have used the word "attention," which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon individual reality. I believe this to be the characteristic and proper mark of the active moral agent.

There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life's bright mysterious expectations.

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.