Writing is a consequence of having been ‘haunted’ by material. Why this is, no one knows.
When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.
The body can’t distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.
The brain is a muscle of busy hills, the struggle of unthought things with things eternally thought.
When poets – write about food it is usually celebratory. Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the thoughtful preparation of meals, the serving of meals, meals communally shared: a sense of the sacred in the profane.
Of the widow’s countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband’s death the widow should think I kept myself alive.
Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.
A diverse and lively collection, the highest art of the interview.
The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.
The institution of marriage is just formalizing an emotion, an attempt to make it seem permanent. The emotion will last or it won’t last; nothing can guarantee it.
I want to tell you that I love you I want to tell you that I love you I want to tell you that I love I love I love I love but you do not.
Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it’s immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.
Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories – something like ghosts in the psychological sense.
How lawyers make work for one another! You’re all priests, worshipping the same god. No wonder you adore one another.
I’m sure all that you’ve heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.
The danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother.
Only in love is there trust – even the possibility of trust.
For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?
Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.
The great happiness in life in creativity belongs to amateurs.