A photograph presents itself not only as a visual representation, but as evidence, more convincing than a painting because of the unimpeachable mechanical means whereby it was made. We do not trust the artist's flattering hand; but we do trust film, and shadows, and light.

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.

Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy.

Many men are more faithful to their golf partners than to their wives and have stuck with them longer.

Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?

Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.