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

What is money, after all? Almost nothing, when one has a sufficiency of it.

Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.

Dogs are dim creatures, do not speak to me of their good sense--have you ever heard of a team of tomcats hauling a sled across the frozen wastes?

A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.

I like ideas. I find them more exciting than human behavior for the most part.

All one wants to do is make a small, finished, polished, burnished, beautiful object . . . I mean, that's all one wants to do. One has nothing to say about the world, or society, or morals or politics or anything else. One just wants to get the damn thing done, you know? Kafka had it right when he said that the artist is the man who has nothing to say. It's true. You get the thing done, but you don't actually have anything to communicate, apart from the object itself.