Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. E….

Art doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it..

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never ca….

He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her..

It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he write….

I am too nervous to eat pie..

It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar..

Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement..

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications..

Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it..

Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on..

The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places..

Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He'd said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He….

She won't give him back his look..

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world..

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth..

Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt t….

Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate..

What good are insights? They only make things worse..

Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that..

In the beginning, when I was trying to write, I couldnt turn off the outside world to the extent that I can now..