Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.
The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable.
This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.
we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death
Is any novelist going to recognize the moment when he or she has nothing more to say? It is a brave thing to admit. And since as a professional writer you are full of anxiety anyway, you could easily misread the signs.