Fundamentally, [prayer] is a position, a placement of oneself.

Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.

If nobody talks about books, if they are not discussed or somehow contended with, literature ceases to be a conversation, ceases to be dynamic. Most of all, it ceases to be intimate. It degenerates into a monologue or a mutter. An unreviewed book is a struck bell that gives no resonance. Without reviews, literature would be oddly mute in spite of all those words on all those pages of all those books. Reviewing makes of reading a participant sport, not a spectator sport.

The artist's work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. And something terrible resides at the heart of wonder. Celebration is social, amenable. Wonder has a chaotic splendor.

Memory is, first, a captivating mystery.

It's always a thrilling risk to say exactly what you mean, to express exactly what you see.

Silence was the first prayer I learned to trust.