I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.

Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.

Writers take words seriously-perha ps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.

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

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.

Mozart's music gives us permission to live.