But who knows what good might come from the least of us? From the bones of old horses is made the most beautiful Prussian Blue..

Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve--hopeless ly he writes in the hope that he might serve--not himself and not others, but that gr….

There is a certain type of conversation one hears only when one is drunk and it is like a dream, full of humor and threat and significance, deep sign….

The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve…something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is….

There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process..

What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But thi….

It's become fashionable these days to say that the writer writes because he is not whole, he has a wound, he writes to heal it, but who cares if the ….

You must stop worrying about why things happen and wonder what they mean when they do..

Writers are like eremites or anchorites - natural-born eremites or anchorites - who seem puzzled as to why they went up the pole or into the cave in ….

Someone once told me a story about long term relationships. To think of them as a continent to explore. I could spend a lifetime backpacking through ….

Nothing we do is inevitable, but everything we do is irreversible..

I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. If you don't do anything with it, you lose it..

Words at night were feral things..

Did the walls of the barn start to tremble With a glory they could not contain? Did anyone wake with the feeling Of peace that they could not e….

You have never seen such animals as these who without a sound or a sign carry you off. You race with them across the long familiar ground that in tha….

I believe in guilt. There's not enough guilt around these days for my taste..

One is always enthralled, I think, when a young writer you're just beginning to read and comprehend dies..

One writes to find words' meanings..

Nothing the writer can do is ever enough..

A writer starts out, I think, wanting to be a transfiguring agent, and ends up usually just making contact, contact with other human beings. This, un….

Writers when they're writing live in a spooky, clamorous silence, a state somewhat like the advanced stages of prayer but without prayer's calming be….