“Don’t let affluence make you impoverished of God.”

“You can't let God down because you are not the one holding him up”

“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.”

“If they wish to alleviate the sufferings of the exploited classes, let them live up to their pretensions, let them abandon the academy and go out there and work politically and economically and in a humanitarian spirit.”

“Learning to listen, letting people finish their sentences, and most of all, the habit of noticing the difference between what people say and how they say it. {on the habits of psychoanalytic training and practice applied to fiction writing} The gap between what people tell you and what's really going on is what interests me.”

“(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious idea turns to the idea of God.”

“How to read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.”