Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.

There is a terrible sameness to the euphoria of alcohol and the euphoria of metaphor.

When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places.

Avoid kneeling in unheated stone churches. Ecclesiastical dampness causes prematurely grey hair.

It is not, as somebody once wrote, the smell of corn bread that calls us back from death; it is the lights and signs of love and friendship.

Then it is dark; it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.