Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls.

I wonder, when a writer's blocked and doesn't have any resources to pull himself out of it, why doesn't he jump in his car and drive around the U.S.A.? I went last winter for seven thousand miles and it was lovely. Inexpensive, too.

New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why.

How wonderful it was to love something without the compromise of language.