Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.

Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.

Lonely, ain't it? Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.

Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.