The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.

The literary scene is a kind of Medusa’s raft, small and sinking, and one’s instinct when a newcomer tries to clamber aboard is to step on his fingers.

I would rather be seated between any two women than any two men at a dinner party.

I am sometimes visited by the heretical thought that there is no such thing as good and bad architecture, any more than there is good and bad nature. It is all in where you stand at the time.

Appealingness is inversely proportional to attainability.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

We're past the age of heroes and hero kings. ... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.