I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.

...All my best words are deserters and do not answer the trumpet call, and the remainder are cripples.

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.

I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them.

Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.

To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena - all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.