My first love was reading, which inspired me to write.

you're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself.

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

The novel is the affliction for which only the novel is the cure.

Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'