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 when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.

Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualis…

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

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