Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

Amid the gray, an incongruous band of daytime blue asserts itself. To the west, a pink sun already begins its descent. The effect is of three isolated aspects, distinct phases of the day. All of it, strewn across the horizon, is contained in his vision.

The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one another is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life.

One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist.

I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.