Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.
Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.
Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.
Lists are a form of power.
Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap’s versifying.
I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.
Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.
Well, I would hardly say I do write as yet. But I write because I like words. I suppose if I liked stone I might carve. I like words. I like reading. I notice particular words. That sets me off.
Young girls are sad. They like to be; it makes them feel strong.
One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.
The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.
I don’t see much point in doing things for a pure joke. Every now and then you need a joke, but not so much as the people who spend all their lives constructing joke palaces think you do.
I was no good at being a child.
Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.
Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.
Once you get older, people stop listening to what you say. It’s very agreeable once you get used to it.
I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you’re writing about. It doesn’t encumber you, it makes you free.
I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live – I don’t think I’ve ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.