In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

If they give me the bloody prize, why can't they say nice things about me?

I am the worst judge of my books.

Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous; gray light streaking each bare branch, each single twig, along one side, making another tree, of glassy veins.

I'm a hopeless 19th-century romantic.

I think I'm less the writer than I'm the written.

That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.