“Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.”

“His connection to his life was that of a sculptor to his statue or a novelist to his novel. It is an inviolable right of a novelist to rework his novel. If the opening does not please him, he can rewrite or delete it. But Zdena's existence denied Mirek that author's prerogative. Zdena insisted on remaining on the opening pages of the novel and did not let herself be crossed out.”

“There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.”

“A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.”

“You must ask for what you really want. / Don't go back to sleep. / The dooris round and open. / Don't go back to sleep.”

“A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.”