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.

The literary scene is a kind of Medusa’s raft, small and sinking, and one’s instinct when a newcomer tries to clamber aboard is to step on his fingers.

It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

Hope bases vast premises on foolish accidents, and reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.

It's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain.

Fraud makes the world go round.