What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.

You think you have the amount of money that is your credit limit. We're just wired to think that, you know? Until the bill arrives - a sobering moment - you think you're richer than you are.

We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?

No male writer is likely to be asked to sit on a panel addressing itself to the special problems of a male writer.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

In the animal world individuals cheat, as do we.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day.