We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone – its value is incontestable.

I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.

You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.

Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.

And I’m drawn to failure. I often write about it, and I’m sympathetic with it, I think, because I feel I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.

Shakespeare would seem to have been a person for whom the human voice/personality in all its splendid idiosyncrasy was absolutely enthralling.