The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.

When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.

And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.

She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.

The young people have a phrase for this now, which is "slay in your lane." That's a very important principle of writing. You have to work out what it is you can't do, obscure it, and focus on what works.

In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.