I'm just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or it could have been like, and how that had something to do with the way we live now. Novels are always inquiries for me.

Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disability.

Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network.

One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.

Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.

I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.