I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.

Writing is the most solitary of arts.

What madness! Yet she would do it, if she could force herself. She'd become, she believed, a stronger person: a willful, resolute. Like the man who adored her, reckless.

I come from people who did not go to college. They didn't even finish high school. People who one might call ordinary Americans who are very hardworking.

Tragedy is the highest form of art.