I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now.

One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.

Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it.

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

First sentences are doors to worlds.

To hear, one must be silent.

there are times when you have to speak because silence is betrayal.