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

I can't say I was a very successful sorority girl.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives.

I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, mediated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate language with which to tell the story: This seems to me quintessentially human, one of the great adventures of our species.

These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.

The mere passage of time makes us all exiles.