So I am lonely, but not alone, like everybody else.

Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.

I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves.

Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years.

People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there. Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way.

When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page stories, characters, images, notions. We are communing with the mind of the author.

The air itself was ebony, like the denial, the refutation, of the idea of light.