The things that stayed were things that didn't matter except they stayed, night and day, all seasons the same, and were peaceful to a fault and boded no ill but thought well enough of themselves to repeat their presences.

it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.

What one wants to do with stories is screw them up.

If you were a fully realized person-whatever the hell that would be-you wouldn't fool around writing books.

Words are the supreme objects. They are minded things.

When reviewers take the trouble to compliment a writer on her style, it is usually because she has made it easy for them to slide from one sentence to another like an otter down a slope.

The death of God represents not only the realization that gods have never existed, but the contention that such a belief is no longer even irrationally possible: that neither reason nor the taste and temper of the times condones it. The belief lingers on, of course, but it does so like astrology or a faith in a flat earth.