The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.

Blood transforms the warm bath water and, in it, I see weakly that this was a mistake. The razor's cut is not deep, nevertheless the blood rushes out happily in the warm water as if kin to it, the same tender substance. Rising a new person transformed with an icy sense of error I go to the sink and turn on cold water which is not friendly to blood. The cut is deeper than imagined.

Language is the instrument in all cases and can language be trusted?If it were not for language, could we lie?

Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.

Princeton is quite integrated. Women are professors at Princeton. Women are students at Princeton. That began in the 1970s.

On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.

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."