The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please.

When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept - the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do - they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.

Being a divorcee in a small town is a little like playing Monopoly; eventually you land on all the properties.

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that Mankind has invented yet.