I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.

…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.

They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other.... or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.

The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.

So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.

If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.

There's nothing as scary as the future.