I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

I was on the verge of jumping into one of those holes in life out of which we emerge a bit tattered and bloody, though we remain sure nonetheless that we had to make the jump.

Yeah, but now suddenly - you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too.

I had let my digust with teaching ruin my love of literature.

I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.

Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.

Fishing makes us less the hostages to the horrors of making a living.