I don’t know what’s the matter with me, why I’m so adept at distance, why I feel so remote from things, why life feels like a rumor.

Anything processed by memory is fiction.

My medium is prose, not the novel.

Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it.

To me, the moment you're talking about nonfiction you're talking about reality.

If I'm reading a book and it seems truly interesting, I tend to start reading back to front in order not to be too deeply under the sway of progress.

Momentum, in literary mosaic, derives not from narrative but from the subtle, progressive buildup of thematic resonances.

The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things.

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.

I take literature as a really serious human activity. It's not just a playful thing. It can be hilarious and wonderful and performative, but I think it's really serious.

Anyone with great ambition, great vision, and great passion can be a great person.

It was at this time that she entirely gave up on reading. The covers of books looked like coffins to her, either shabby or ornate, and what was inside them might as well have been dust.

Civilization means conforming to a standard of behavior that may not seem natural to us.

I don't think I have accomplished what I still have to accomplish. There is one thing that I would like to do, and that's to bring security and peace to the Jewish people.

If you're with someone you don't exactly trust then you have to watch yourself and that's the hardest thing for an actor not to do, and not listen to yourself as you're talking.

I asked [my father] what there was to make doctoring more disgusting than nursing, which women were always doing, and which ladies had done publicly in the Crimea. He could not tell me.

We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance.

Let no day slip over without some comfort received from the mouth of God.

Henry James joyously engaged in the act of writing. A good day's writing gave him a sense of strength, of control over chaos, a victory of order and clarity over the confused battle of existence.

The past is history written in stone that can't be altered. The future is transitory and never guaranteed. Today is the only thing you can alter for certain. Make the most of it.