Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

I'm somewhat shy about the brutal facts of being a carnivore. I don't like meat to look like animals. I prefer it in the form of sausages, hamburger and meat loaf, far removed from the living thing.

Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.

What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?

In no other sport must the spectator move.

A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.

You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a sense of a completed design, that somebody is in charge, and that while life is pointless, the book isn't pointless. The author knows where he is going. That's form.