So much love, too much love, it is our madness, it is rotting us out, exploding us like dandelion polls.

Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.

I know how to choke. Given even a splinter-thin opportunity to let my side down and destroy my own score, I will seize it. Not only does ice water not run through my veins, but what runs there has a boiling point lower than body temperature.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

So, you know, I think any life has in it enough material, enough points of departure, to fuel a writer's career and that we shouldn't worry about what we're not but to try to focus on what we are and what we do know.

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.