Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it's no more than a gift on loan.

Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it's no more than a gift on loan.

The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance.

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not.

I used to take five or six books away and bring five or six books back. Nobody gave me direction or advice and I read much in the way that a boy might watch television.

I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church.