I know how deeply slothful I am.

I just know so many people who have six or seven foreign languages and have read everything and have musical training and they are still dorks

Someone — Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? — once said that anything that can be read twice is literature; I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable.

One serious drawback about letters is that, in order to get them, one must send some out. When it comes to the mail, I feel it is better to receive than to give.

The problem for me is that reading is, I won't say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.

I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.

Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.