...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

It's rather an exhilarating feeling. It's 6 or 7 when you get up and go out into the fields wearing your Wellingtons or high boots. You know that at this very hour half the nation does the same thing, which gives you, with the benefit of hindsight, a satisfaction in doing those things, too, a knowledge, a sense of the nation. I was a city boy until then.

When the eye fails to find beauty-alias solace-it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to perceive virtue in ugliness.

Poetry is what is gained in translation.

When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.

Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.

I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.