One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.

Each time I undertake to reread Virginia Woolf, I am somewhat baffled by the signature breathlessness and relentlessly "poetic" tone, the shimmering impressionism, so very different from the vivid, precise, magisterial (and often very funny) prose of her contemporary James Joyce.

There is something thrilling in the mimesis of life's surprising unfolding.

. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.

I come from people who did not go to college. They didn't even finish high school. People who one might call ordinary Americans who are very hardworking.

Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.

At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.