The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

Love just seems to make life not just livable, but a gallant, gallant event.

No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards.

You have to be willing to think the unthinkable.

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.