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

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

“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. ”

“Harold Bloom weeps for me.”

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

“Today, my love, I am too tired to write for you. You will find in your heart a letter, several pages, full of silence. Read it slowly. The light of this day wrote it for me. In it, it si just about you and the rest coming to me each time I look to you, far away, hundreds kilometers from here.”

“To understand how that astounding moral blindness was possible, it is helpful to think of the workers of an armament plant who rejoice in the 'stay of execution' of their factory thanks to big new orders, while at the same time honestly bewailing the massacres visited upon each other by Ethiopians and Eritreans; or to think how it is possible that the 'fall in commodity prices' may be universally welcomed as good news while 'starvation of African children' is equally universally, and sincerely, lamented.”