Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when you were young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would?

Cholesterol to go with alcohol; all the bad things in English-speaking life end in -ol.

If you could have a famous writer, dead or alive, write an obituary for you and really puff you up to have been something you weren’t, perhaps, or otherwise take liberties with your memory, what writer would you choose?

Even if you're the worst writer in the world, at least you'll have the evidence.

Notable American Women is a weird nougat of a book that suggests Coetzee, Kafka, Beckett, Barthelme, O'Brien, Orwell, Paley, Borges-and none of them exactly. Finally you just have to chew it for its own private juice.