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My first girl, only sixteen year and she go, she run away to you.

In the best fiction, there exists a palpable sense of discovery.

The best writers talk a story the way they put it down on the page.

Revision is not a sanction to get the head and the will involved.

The main thing a poet tries to do, above all things, is to write a poem.

For Henry Moore there is not only the best day but the worst.

After having been riddled with stars: I lost the light that was lost.

Some portion of love is braided from lying, from the names of distance.

The white geometry of caulk between bathroom tiles—I’m held in place.

“A book is an ax,” Franz Kafka once said, “for the frozen sea within.”

I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their sameness.

What can go heartbreakingly wrong, and what would you do?

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

You quickly find nothing interests people so much as themselves.

If you’re not having fun, then there isn’t a big impetus to stay alive.

Sex can be revelatory. Essential nature emerges in sex.

My soul’s parts know little and don’t care whether I live or die.

Only one constant existed: I wrote. Writing was my center of gravity.

The small, inadequate marks follow the outline, things left behind.

The success is deserved, I think: certainly it was not lightly gained.

“What would Toby do?” is a question that often appears in my mind.

The future of the book began to appear among imaginary woods.

They’re still there since they never grew old. The story is never finished.

In real life, my favorite character, so to speak, is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A more typical writing day for me is being constantly interrupted.

Art doesn’t conform to a capitalist’s ratio of productivity to time.

What’s the most useful criticism you’ve received? “Keep writing.”

Every really good book on first reading is life changing.

I’ve read this novel at various stages of my life and I feel as if I know Isabel.