The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.

The trick is to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one’s example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.

Have fun writing, because it enhances both the writer's and reader's experience.

Contradictory strands create an essay that's richly ambivalent.

The knowledge that my discriminations are skewed and not always universally desirable doesn't stop me in the least from making them.

It bothers me when I can't, for example, remember a name. I don't know if it's pre-senility or whether there are too many names packed in our brains.

In new work, we need to see the shadow, however faint, of previous literary effort.