A woman’s beauty lies, not in any exaggeration of the specialized zones, nor in any general harmony that could be worked out by means of the sectio aurea or a similar aesthetic superstition; but in the arabesque of the spine. The curve by which the back modulates into the buttocks. It is here that grace sits and rides a woman’s body.

Men emerge pale from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking, until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

You cannot but learn more of the world's heft, as you take it now into your hands.

irony is a way of having one's cake while appearing to eat it.

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

Faith is not so much a binary pole as a quantum state, which tends to indeterminacy when closely examined.