How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.

I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.