The most important things, I told them, were observation and consciousness. Keep your eyes open, see clearly, think about what you see, ask yourself what it means.
A neighbor once told me he had trouble with García Márquez’s novel because he likes to drink while he reads, and 'The Autumn of the Patriarch' gave him no space in which to take a sip of his beer.
I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to boys for direction. I remember that as a great loss.
I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.
I liked my students, who were often so eager, bright, and enthusiastic that it took me years to notice how much trouble they had in reading a fairly simple short story. Almost simultaneously, I was st...
How ashamed most of us would be, if we were reminded of some past behavior, some attitude that we maintained while under the delusion that we were in love—and were loved in return.
Don’t come to Paris if you’re planning a solitary hike through a sexual desert.
But briefly, Theresa’s case has been diagnosed as one of acute hallucinatory psychosis, brought on by a particularly difficult and prolonged adolescent psychosexual adjustment, no doubt aggravated by...
The truth is that grammar is always interesting, always useful. Mastering the logic of grammar contributes, in a mysterious way that again evokes some process of osmosis, to the logic of thought.
End of this painful story: a man possessed and maddened enough to write such letters, and a bereaved father receiving them, until at last he reached the point at which he refused to read any more.
Yvonne had created this place for her and for others like her: born into the wrong life, the wrong body, an innocent victim of God’s mistake.
You will do yourself a disservice if you confine your reading to the rising star whose six-figure, two-book contract might seem to indicate where your own work should be heading. I’m not saying you sh...
You think, Fuck it. The guy’s a genius. He deserves her. What is a woman, after all? You are alive and in Paris.
You know who they wanted to play Rick? Aaron asked.I shook my head. Why was I so tense? Didn't Aaron's question prove that we were just a couple of old-movie fans swapping Hollywood trivia gossip?Rona...
Only a natural writer could sound as if she is not writing so much as thinking on the page.
Maybe real love is being able to ask, Do I have greens in my teeth?
Literature not only breaks the rules, but makes us realize that there are none.
Let me digress a moment to talk about beginnings. How much simpler life would be if we were wise enough to stop at the first blush of romance, the start of a business transaction or a casual friendshi...
It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizo...
Her mother had responded in kind, and the result was unpleasantness and misery rebounding all the time.