Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

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

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way.

What does it mean to be born? After we die, will it be the same thing as it was before we were born? Or a different kind of nothingness? Because there might be knowledge then. Memory.

Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.

There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.