But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.

The smooth stones you pick up and examine under the moon's light have been made blue from the sea. Next morning when you pull them from your trouser pocket, they are still blue.

Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.

You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.