"plunge ahead, put one foot in front of the other, straighten your back and your shoulders and everything else that is…"

"I've come to think that the traditional way of writing is the artificial way that that's not the way things work at a…"

"I don’t like to hear people speaking in my work. I like reading it, and I marvel at people who can do it well. And th…"

"His death was imminent and we were all anticipating it, including him, but we never gave any thought to the fact that…"

"Out of the corner of one eye, I could see my mother. Out of the corner of the other eye, I could see her shadow on th…"

"How soft is the blackness as it falls. It falls in silence and yet it is deafening, for no other sound except the bla…"

"I suppose that my work is always mourning something, the loss of a paradise—not the thing that comes after you die, b…"

"You can probably tell from my writing that I’m obsessed with notions of justice and injustice—those things that are w…"

"We weren’t taught Shakespeare or Milton in order to understand our own situation—they were taught as the jewels in Qu…"

"Oh what a morning it was, that first morning of Mrs. Sweet awaking before the baby Heracles with his angry cries, dec…"