I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing.

For however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable I.

It Was Once Suggested to Me that, as an Antidote to Crying, I Put My Head in a Paper Bag.

Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.

Some of us who live in arid parts of the world think about water with a reverence others might find excessive.

There is always a point in the writing of a piece when I sit in a room literally papered with false starts and cannot put one word after another and imagine that I have suffered a small stroke, leaving me apparently undamaged but actually aphasic.

One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.