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

How circumstantial reality is! Facts are like individual letters, with their spikes and loops and thorns, that make up words: eventually they hurt our eyes, and we long to take a bath, to rake the lawn, to look at the sea.

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.

I think books should have secrets, like people do.

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.

My mother didn't raise me to be a critic, but I seem to have become one anyway.