Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself.

I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn't work, or what simply is not alive.

[On marriage:] It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings.

It's beginnings that are hard. I always begin with a great sense of dread and trepidation. Nietzsche says that the decision to start writing is like leaping into a cold lake.

To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better.

The only interesting ideas are heresies

Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.