There is a terrible weight in all kinds of beauty

I feel a terrible loss when I (eventually must) complete a work of fiction.

In families there are frequently matters of which no one speaks, nor even alludes. There are no words for these matters. As the binding skeleton beneath the flesh is never acknowledged by us and, when at last it defines itself, is after all an obscenity.

Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.

You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

After love a formal feeling comes.

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.