Something about being helpless in bed, people hit you up for sympathy. They've got you where they want you. - John Updike

Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.

An author that's in now might be out in ten years. And vice-versa. Who knows when the final sifting is done, in the year 2050, say, who will be read of my generation? You'd like to think you will be one. But there has to be a constant weeding that goes on. The Victorians read all kinds of writers who we don't have time for now. Who reads Thackeray? An educated person reads Dickens, or reads some Dickens. But Thackeray?

What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit.