celebrate while you can

The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

My first love was reading, which inspired me to write.

A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.

I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.

He was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is her life.