The novel is dead. Long live the antinovel, built from scraps.

Anything processed by memory is fiction.

My medium is prose, not the novel.

Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

I don’t know what’s the matter with me, why I’m so adept at distance, why I feel so remote from things, why life feels like a rumor.

A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it.

To me, the moment you're talking about nonfiction you're talking about reality.

If I'm reading a book and it seems truly interesting, I tend to start reading back to front in order not to be too deeply under the sway of progress.

Momentum, in literary mosaic, derives not from narrative but from the subtle, progressive buildup of thematic resonances.

The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things.

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.

The Fur Person learned then and there that it is better to be a philosopher than to be a king and that, all things considered, wisdom was to be preferred to power.

Be the spark.

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.

The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone.

All that passes for knowledge can be arranged in a hierarchy of degrees of certainty, with arithmetic and the facts of perception at the top.

Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on.

I asked for help, which is the hardest thing in the world.

Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being oppressed: Those who should be ashamed are they who oppress others.

If you approach Billy Martin right, he's Okay. I avoid him altogether.

I treat golf as a sport. I let other people treat it like a hobby.