Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past..

Swimming always cleans your soul.

The declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons..

(From the story The Last Days of a Famous Mime) He said nothing. He was mildly annoyed at her presumption: that he had not thought this many, many ti….

Living where I live New York I don't think anyone's going to make a fuss. But it is more deeply satisfying because it's of your place and means that ….

I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from..

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on..

To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely..

People do not love those whose eyes show that they are somewhere else.

My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before..

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent..

Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry..

Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame..

I don't think you have the right to shout about other people's private life..

Our prime minister could embrace and forgive the people who killed our beloved sons and fathers, and so he should, but he could not, would not, apolo….

Glass is a thing in disguise, an actor, is not solid at all, but a liquid?an old sheet of glass will not only take on a royal and purplish tinge but ….

I don't need new boots I got bluchers back down home. Eff the effing bluchers I'll buy you new adjectival effing elastic sided boots..

It's true: one of the things that I've always thought about American society is that you never get the sort of natural politicisation of class consci….

Writers are always envious, mean-minded, filled with rage and envyat other's good fortune. There is nothing like the failure of a close friend to che….

I did not know that history is like a blood stain that keeps on showing on the wall no matter how many new owners take possession, no matter how many….

I thought I would be an organic chemist. I went off to university, and when I couldn't understand the chemistry lectures I decided that I would be a ….