“Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.”

“I no longer want to live in an apartment furnished with forklifts and backhoes.”

“For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo.”

“I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.”

“Poetry is prose in slow motion.”

“But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.”