The beauty of a fragment is that it still supports the hope of brilliant completeness.

I was giving up--being realistic, as people liked to say, meaning the same thing. Being realistic made me feel bitter.

We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or: Today is the day of the meatloaf. The meatloaf is swell. It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.

You felt it as a depth of ease in certain boys, their innate, affable assurance that they would not have to struggle for a place in the world; that is already reserved for them.

Our memories tell us who we are and they cannot be achieved through committee work, by consulting other people about what happened. That doesn't mean that at all times memories are telling us the absolute truth, but that the main source of who we are is that memory, flawed or not.

There’s no right way to tell all stories, only the right way to tell a particular story.

Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.