Of course, both [Oscar] Wilde & [Vladimir] Nabokov believe in many things, and these things emerge in their writing clearly - for Wilde, the folly of humankind and the (romantic) grandeur of the heroic, lone individual (not unlike Wilde himself); for Nabokov, the possibility of a kind of transcendence through a great, prevailing, superior sort of love (especially in Ada, the most self-congratulatory of novels.)

I think whenever we think of our hometowns, we tend to think of very specific people: with whom you rode on the school bus, who was your next door neighbor you were playing with, who your girlfriend was. It's always something very specific.

Your punishment if you're a woman. Not loved enough.

Yet the fact had no consciousness of itself except through me.

I am more or less reading all the time.

Ambitious, absorbing, and poignantly moving.

In a sense, I may not consciously know what I'm doing. I feel that I'm telling a story. I'm a kind of medium by which something is transmitted.