If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital.

When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language

This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.

Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student - and not a good one - and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved.

I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write.

I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.

My life is a reading list.