I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.

Life's bare as a bone.

Sometimes I think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted reading.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.