I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition.

I swim in a shaft of light, upside down, and I can see myself clearly, through and through, from every angle. Perhaps I stand on the brink of a great discovery.

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.

Everything I do is because of writing. If I go for a walk, it's because I'm thinking of writing. I go look at flowers, I go look at the garden, I go look at a museum, but it's all coming back to writing.

I would never never read a work of fiction and want to know about the person's life.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.