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.

The great thing about the dead, they make space.

We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.

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

In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.