Art has always been aware of itself as art.

In one sense, reading is a great waste of time. In another sense, it is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand and one lives in a single lifespan, to watch the great impersonal universe at work again and again That is why I read: I want everything to be okay. That’s why I read when I was a lonely kid and that’s why I read now that I’m a scared adult.

If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it.

Irreverence is a way of playing hooky and remaining present at the same time.

Something unpronounceable followed by a long silence points out my life is becoming a landscape.

Once I witnessed a windstorm so severe two 100-year-old trees were uprooted on the spot. The next day, walking among the wreckage, I found the friable nests of birds, completely intact and unharmed on the ground. That the featherweight survive the massive, that this reversal of fortune takes place among us — that is what haunts me. I don’t know what it means.

[On filling out a grant application:] I seek an extended period of time, free from all distractions, so that I might be free to be distracted.