Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it.

I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

At a certain age just being around particular people is an event.

I'm releasing myself from the responsibility of claiming to know when something is good and when it isn't.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.

There is no single formula for good sentence. An invisible integument that gives the sentence wholeness and musicality, sometimes. But other times, the formula is almost purely one of context. And yet other times, of sheer precision of meaning. This is a good sentence: "Just as he was settling into the warm mud of alcoholic gloom, Shrike caught his arm." "Warm mud of alcoholic gloom" is exact and right and accurate.