We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.

The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.

How can a people who do not mean to understand death hope to understand love, and who will sound the alarm?

Sometimes the easiest-seeming stories to a reader are the hardest kind to write.

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

The irony of Christmas is always upon the poor in heart; the mystery of the solstice is always upon the rest of us.

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