Movies took you right up to the edge but kept you safe.

Hope bases vast premises on foolish accidents, and reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.

It seems to me the book has not just aesthetic values - the charming little clothy box of the thing, the smell of the glue, even the print, which has its own beauty. But there's something about the sensation of ink on paper that is in some sense a thing, a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon. I can't break the association of electric trash with the computer screen. Words on the screen give the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle.

My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me-to give the mundane its beautiful due.

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

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

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.