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.

I could never take the idea of religion very seriously.

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

You can't deny Eros. Eros wills trike, like lightning. Our human defenses are frail, ludicrous. Like plasterboard houses in a hurricane. Your triumph is in perfect submission. And the god of Eros will flow through you, as Lawrence says, in the 'perfect obliteration of blood consciousness.

My life is a very interior and solitary life. I tend not to care that much about external things.

... such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.