I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called 'culture' - and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species.

My life is a very interior and solitary life. I tend not to care that much about external things.

I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.

The greatest works of literature seem to embody both "art" and "morality".

Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.

I learned you don't discover the evidence of any cause in its result.

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