“You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight. You either continue to write puerile bilge, or you change. In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.”

“One of these days I'm-a make me a book out of you.”

“The name of the author is the first to gofollowed obediently by the title, the plot,the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novelwhich suddenly becomes one you have never read,never even heard of,as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbordecided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,to a little fishing village where there are no phones.Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbyeand watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.It has floated away down a dark mythological riverwhose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,well on your own way to oblivion where you will join thosewho have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.No wonder you rise in the middle of the nightto look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.No wonder the moon in the window seems to have driftedout of a love poem that you used to know by heart.”

“A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.”

“This is not what it is like to be you,I realized as a few of your magnificent cloudsflew over the rooftop.It is just me thinking about being you.And before I headed back down the hill,I walked in a circle around your house,making an invisible linewhich you would have to cross before dark.”

“Vade MecumI want the scissors to be sharpand the table perfectly levelwhen you cut me out of my lifeand paste me in that book you always carry.”

“And the reason I am writing thison the back of a manila envelopenow that they have left the train togetheris to tell you that when she turnedto lift the large, delicate celloonto the overhead rack,I saw him looking up at herand what she was doingthe way the eyes of saints are paintedwhen they are looking up at Godwhen he is doing something remarkable,something that identifies him as God.”