The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that’s the minute you have to stop because from then on it’s wrong.
He smiled and bent forward, a hand on each knee, his truculence gleaming through his smile like a stone under water.
I’ve done a Russian movie,” Claire said. “Thank God they’re still stuck in realism, Zola-crazy. Subtitling their films is like captioning a child’s picture book.
When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child’s hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.
Families hold each other in an iron grip of definition. One must break the grip, somehow.
It was hard to reassure grown-ups when you weren’t certain yourself what you were feeling and thinking – when thoughts dissolved before you could name them.
Teachers inspire the smallest hearts to grow big enough to change the world.
A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.
I was the goldfish that leapt out of the bowl.
In my early twenties, that’s when I really began to write. Before that, I was too busy working, keeping myself going.
I have a painter’s memory. I can remember things from my childhood which were so powerfully imprinted on me, the whole scene comes back.
I don’t like to listen to music while I’m working.
The language of labels is like paper money, issued irresponsibly, with nothing of intrinsic value behind it, that is, with no effort of the intelligence to see, to really apprehend.
Freedom is a public library.
Life was an impenetrable mystery cloaked in babble.
When there’s a terrible murder people who are interviewed say, ‘This has always been a quiet neighborhood.’ That is so dumb and uninformed! The earth is not a quiet neighborhood. There isn’t anyplace that’s a quiet neighborhood. People are asking themselves how to stay neat in the cyclone.
Life is all getting used to what you’re not used to.