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

Affairs, ... , like everything else, ask too much.

Faith is not so much a binary pole as a quantum state, which tends to indeterminacy when closely examined.

I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board of other partners tells you it's time to get your gold watch, and no physical claim is made on you like an athlete or an actress. So I try to plug along on the theory that I can still do it. I still keep trying to produce prose, and some poetry, in the hope that I can find something to say about being alive, this country, but generally the human condition.

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

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

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.