God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, as Reenie used to say. Could it be that Myra is my designated guardian angel? Or is she instead a foretaste of Purgatory? And how do...

I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.

I learned about religion the way most children learned about sex, [in the schoolyard]. . . . They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did...

But remember that forgiveness, too, is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

The heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.

speech to him was a task, a battle, words mustered behind his beard and issued one at a time, heavy and square like tanks.

Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette.

Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn’t now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better – a better person. They believed it could uplift...

What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your...

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people’s command of English – that’s nonsense.

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have....

Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who’ll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it’s the latter, so I sign up.

It isn’t running away they’re afraid of. We wouldn’t get far. It’s those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go.You could not believe I was more than your echo.

She wasn’t stupid. She just didn’t want to put her neuron power into long sentences.

How furious she must be, now that she’s been taken at her word.

What is it the I’ll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn’t yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don’t...

…we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there’s nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

Modesty is invisibility…Never forget it. To be seen—to be seen—is to be…penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable.

How much misery . . . how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love...

But it seems she’d wanted children after all, because when she was told she’d been accidentally sterilized she could feel all the light leaking out of her.

What else can I do? Once you’ve gone this far you aren’t fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You’re overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be...

You all right?” he said again.I didn’t love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I was seeing him through a smeared window or glossy paper; he didn’t belong here. But...

I was tired of her getting away with being so young.

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you’re gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It’s yours. Seize your space.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of...

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

No wires tender even as nervescan transmit the impact ofour seasons, our catastropheswhile we are closed inside them

A word after a word after a word is power

If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one.

I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we’re about to do something harmful, to someone else.

The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.

Variation on the Word SleepI would like to watch you sleeping,which may not happen.I would like to watch you,sleeping. I would like to sleepwith you, to enteryour sleep as its smooth dark waveslides over my...

You shouldn’t do that,” said Laura. “You could set yourself on fire.

If he had known unstructured space is a delugeand stocked his log house-boat with all the animals even the wolves, he might have floated. But obstinate hestated, The land is solid and stamped, watching his...

I feel despised there, for having so little money; also for once having had so much. I never actually had it, of course. Father had it, and then Richard. But money was imputed to me,...

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple,...

But unshed tears can turn rancid. So can memory. So can biting your tongue. My bad nights were beginning. I couldn’t sleep.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‘race’ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

We shouldn’t be saying ‘Save the planet’; we should be saying: ‘Save viable conditions in which people can live.’ That’s what we’re dealing with here.

I’m not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera – or an NHL game.

Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the...

What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!

It is very odd to be standing in a locked room in the Penitentiary, speaking with a strange man about France and Italy and Germany. A travelling man. He must be a wanderer, like Jeremiah...

But the body had its own cultural forms. It had its own art. Executions wereits tragedies, pornography was its romance.