For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?

Not even the most devastating truth can be told; it must be evoked.

Not to be alone. To be spared the possibility of knowing oneself, in aloneness.

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

That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

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

To the west, the Pacific Ocean, which revulses me, for its vastness cannot be fitted into any box.