He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.

a certain bohemian, good-witch sort of charm

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.