Very few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates.
When a marriage ends, who is left to understand it?
The appeal of writing is primarily the investigation of mystery.
Not to be alone. To be spared the possibility of knowing oneself, in aloneness.
I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice.
There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.
It’s one of those secrets that’s embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.
I work very slowly. It’s like building a ladder, where you’re building your own ladder rung by rung, and you’re climbing the ladder. It’s not the best way to build a ladder, but I don’t know any other way.
A writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino’s, while inside there dwells a frail, hopeful butterfly of a spirit.
Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer’s vision.
After love a formal feeling comes.
At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There’s something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.
I come from people who did not go to college. They didn’t even finish high school. People who one might call ordinary Americans who are very hard-working.
I learned you don’t discover the evidence of any cause in its result.
At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.
Childhood is the province of the imagination and when I immerse myself in it, I re-create it as it was, as it could have been, as I wanted – and didn’t want – it to be.
Evil isn’t a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior.
The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.
I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.
God’s blessing is not always to be distinguished from His wrath.