“Like the silence that surrounds the tolling of the bell allows you to hear the bell.”

“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing-for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible to see your opponent is you …”

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.”

“Alone,alone! It is a fact, you hear more acutely and you see and think most acutely,when you are alone.Alone, alone! But there is happiness in alone, if you believe you have chosen it.”

“I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.”

“The place where you came from ain't there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are now—inside your daddy's house—is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any time. You know that and always did know it. You hear me?”

“Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.”