I keep telling this story - different people, different places, different times - but always you, always me, always this story, because a story is a tight rope between two worlds.

Thinking about time is to acknowledge two contradictory certainties: that our outward lives are governed by the seasons and the clock; that our inward lives are governed by something much less regular-an imaginative impulse cutting through the dictates of daily time, and leaving us free to ignore the boundaries of here and now and pass like lightning along the coil of pure time, that is, the circle of the universe and whatever it does or does not contain.

I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.

Love is vivid. I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version. I never shied away from love's hugeness but I had no idea that love could be as reliable as the sun. The daily rising of love.

I want to get to the end and feel that I've done all I could, given the limitations and given the opportunities.

I’m not club-able, you see. I don’t like literary parties and literary gatherings and literary identities. I’d hate to join anything, however loosely.

We're living in a homogenized culture where everything is the same, and books are not a homogenized culture. They are extremely varied, and they're eccentric because they are the product of an individual mind. They are not, in any way, mediated.