Only white men have the luxury of ignoring race.

Until I was 42, I could fit everything that I owned into two suitcases.

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

My dream has always been to suspend myself in space when I write, and lying horizontal in bed is the closest to doing that.

I used to work for 12 or 14 hours at a time but the digital age has made such happy immersions almost impossible.

All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.