I Have No Useful Theories About Love

I Revise Constantly, As I Go Along And Then Again After I've Finished A First Draft. Few Of My Novels Contain A Single Sentence That Closely Resembles The Sentence I First Set Down. I Just Find That I Have To Keep Zapping And Zapping The English Language Until It Starts To Behave In Some Way That Vaguely Matches My Intentions.

Please, God, Send Me Something To Adore.

The Secret Of Flight Is This -- You Have To Do It Immediately, Before Your Body Realizes It Is Defying The Laws.

Virginia Woolf Came Along In The Early Part Of The Century And Essentially Said Through Her Writing, Yes, Big Books Can Be Written About The Traditional Big Subjects. There Is War. There Is The Search For God. These Are All Very Important Things.

We Throw Our Parties; We Abandon Our Families To Live Alone In Canada; We Struggle To Write Books That Do Not Change The World, Despite Our Gifts And Our Unstinting Efforts, Our Most Extravagant Hopes. We Live Our Lives, Do Whatever We Do, And Then We Sleep--it's As Simple And Ordinary As That. A Few Jump Out Of Windows Or Drown Themselves Or Take Pills; More Die By Accident; And Most Of Us, The Vast Majority, Are Slowly Devoured By Some Disease Or, If We're Very Fortunate, By Time Itself.