A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.

there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.

It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.

It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.

I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.

Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?