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

Philip Glass, like [Virginia] Woolf, is more interested in that which continues than he is in that which begins, climaxes, and ends... Glass and Woolf have both broken out of the traditional realm of the story, whether literary or musical, in favor of something more meditative, less neatly delineated, and more true to life. For me, Glass [finds] in three repeated notes something of [a] rapture of sameness.

Perhaps, in the extravagance of youth, we give away our devotions easily and all but arbitrarily, on the mistaken assumption that we’ll always have more to give.

I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.

a certain bohemian, good-witch sort of charm

Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself.

As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.