Love is never any better than the lover.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

Listen up. Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.

There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises.... If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest, not what pays

Home is memory, home is your history, home is where you work. Some people want to abandon it and become truly local. But the questions are all there.

The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.

Maybe [I care about language] because I'm an editor, maybe because I'm picky, but it's all we got, don't shrink it. Don't dumb it out, make it little.