I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It’ll settle you.' 'I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.

Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live

Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me...my lonely is mine.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won't work. Just wait, it will come.

...the City is what they want it to be: thriftless, warm, scary and full of amiable strangers. No wonder they forget pebbly creeks and when they do not forget the sky completely think of it as a tiny piece of information about the time of day or night.