The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.
Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.
Fire is a speed reader, which is why the ignorant burn books: fire races through pages, takes care of all the knowledge, and never bores you with a summary.
Whatever you have lost there are more of, just not yours.
Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.
Like all good mothers, she always knew the worst was going to happen and was disappointed and relieved when it finally did.
Do not trust an architect: he will always try to talk you into an atrium.
Humor reminds you, when you’re flattened by sorrow, that you’re still human.
You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble – and I’m speaking of life, not writing – is ‘no humor too black.’
Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you’re trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you’re writing into relief so that you can actually see it.
There are two MFA programs here at the University of Texas, and I read on the jury of both of them. And it’s amazing to me how many really talented young writers seem to fear humor.
For about half an hour in mid-1992, I knew as much as any layperson about the pleasures of remote access of other people’s computers.
I wanted to acknowledge that life goes on but that death goes on, too. A person who is dead is a long, long story.
It’s an amazing thing to watch a lizard fold a moth into its mouth, like a sword swallower who specialises in umbrellas.
There’s a good chance that in 40 years, after the floods, people zipping by on scavenged jetpacks with their scavenged baseball caps on backwards, I will be in my rocking chair saying bitterly, ‘I remember when ‘all right’ was two words.’
When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn’t go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.