“Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.”

“A start is a start, and 'is' is 'is' not 'was'.”

“Maybe it's just that some of us have had certain facts and truths slapped up against our heads so hard and so often that we have to see them and pay our respects to their reality.”

“God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.”

“America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many.”

“Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.”

“And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.”