[Nabokov's] language is made visible . . . like a veil or transparent curtain. You cannot help seeing the curtain as you peek into the intimate rooms behind.

As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.

Here was one place where I could find out who I was and what I was going to become. And that was the public library.

Banks introduced the installment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States.

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.

Mapplethorpe presented the body as a sexual object, separating it from the humanity of the person. He added nothing to photography as a medium. I hold his work in low regard.

Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.