My self is all to me. I don't have any need of you.

Art is a means of memorialization of the past, a record of a rapidly vanishing world; a means of exorcising, at least temporarily, the ravages of homesickness. To speak of 'what is past, or passing or to come'-in the most meticulous language thereby to assure its permanence; to honor those we've loved and learned from and must outlive.

My students often say, "My roommate read this story and really liked it", and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, "well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something."

And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.

Betrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.