Most all of the writers I admired when I was in my teens and twenties died young. Fitzgerald lived the longest. He was 44. Dylan Thomas was 39. And then once you're approaching 40, you suddenly think, "Well, maybe I would like to live longer than Fitzgerald or Thomas."

Eat, drink and remarry is my motto.

I like the fact that I'm living in the world rather than in a university.

Everything becomes symbol and irony when you've been betrayed

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

You keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure.

I'd like to have the kind of house someday where a carousel horse wouldn't be out of place in the living room.