Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance.

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

There is a terrible weight in all kinds of beauty

That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.

Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.