Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.

Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.

A story is a living thing, it moves and shifts.

Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us.

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.

I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.