“Harold Bloom weeps for me.”

“I write for the same reason I read: because it's all there is for me.”

“Literature simply becomes richer after you've been fired, rejected, stranded, or had to change a few midnight diapers.”

“Writing is the only art form where a good number of the artists make a slice of their living criticizing one another in print, in public. ”

“Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape -- I didn't read to learn, I was reading to read.”

“Occupying the bottom end of the inequality ladder, and becoming a 'collateral victim' of a human action or a natural disaster, interact the way the opposite poles of magnets do: they tend to gravitate towards each other.”

“If political rights are necessary to set social rights in place, social rights are indispensable to make political rights 'real' and keep them in operation. The two rights need each other for their survival; that survival can only be their joint achievement.”