Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.
As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exerc...
It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.
Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.
But was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in h...
There’s a German term- heimweh, homesickness. It’s a powerful sensation, like a narcotic. A yearning from home, but for something more- a past self, perhaps. A lost self. When I first saw you on the s...
Se você não quer correr o risco. Talvez seja melhor não jogar nada.
Mulheres eram especialistas em chorar, assim como os homens eram humilhados e impedidos de chorar. Mulheres eram purificadas pelo choro, assim como os homens eram maculados e manchados pelo choro.
Marianne laughed. But you can’t disappoint me! I don’t love you.
It was remarkable to Julia—(it did not hurt or offend her, but only amused her)—how Ryan’s family managed to take photographs or videos of themselves that excluded her.
It may be that actual tears have stained the tile floors or soaked into the carpets of such places. It may be that these tears can never be removed. And everywhere the odor of melancholy, that is the...
It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing - how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times,...
He said no break is permanent. Like a bone that heals crooked, still it will heal.
For it seemed (though why it seemed so, no one knew) that everything began on that night. And, once begun, it could not be stopped.
But so like Hollywood people, who played at the emotions they truly felt. Or maybe the emotions they truly felt could only be expressed in play?
And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self.
All prices of all things—at least, useless beautiful things like rare books—are inherently absurd, rooted in the human imagination and in the all-too-human predilection to desperately want what others...
Adriana loved even the rank animal smell of the man's body, her sweat-slicked breasts and belly flattened beneath him, and her arms and legs clutching him as a drowning woman might clutch another pers...
A fear of the unknown: what was that called?Worse yet: a fear of the known.