From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.

Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.

There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.

I write about, more or less, everything I can think of, that is I stretch my imagination as far as it'll go. I am kind of stuck in the middle as far as my life goes, and hence my imagination tends to zero in on things which are indeed in the middle. That is, I don't write about the very rich, who I scarcely know, or the very poor who I don't know very well either.

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

Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.