Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism. One knows only that he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but whe…

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.