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I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented ...more

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Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.

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As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

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You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades.

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Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy and a secret hope: There is a life worth living where histor...more

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It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. ...more

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In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther ...more

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She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

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She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.

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Do women in love feel as men do? Do men love as women love? His virgin bride shared her pipe-frame bed all smiles and laughter. When they were intimat...more

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Lou asked point-blank, Can love last? (Rural people get to philosophizing, and will say anything.)—Oh, darling! No, not that heart-thumping passion. G...more

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The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but that we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. W...more

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The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. W...more

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Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in exper...more

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So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form ha...more