1. “I’ve gotten very alert not just to mixed metaphor but to any writing mistake.”
2. “I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.”
3. “But it is curious how you can see that an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it.”
4. “Collections aren’t really planned. I just keep writing short pieces until I have enough for a collection.”
5. “I can talk for a long time only when it’s about something boring.”
6. “Art is not in some far-off place.”
7. “My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.”
8. “There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.”
9. “I always interrupt work with other work, either in a small way or big way, so that’s normal.”
10. “Do what you want to do, and don’t worry if its a little odd or doesn’t fit the market.”
11. “Often, the idea that there can be a wide range of translations of one text doesn’t occur to people – or that a translation could be bad, very bad, very bad, and unfaithful to the original.”
12. “Part of my mind is working on how to end the thing while I’m going on. You need at least two brains to write.”
13. “That’s the interesting thing about writing. You can start late, you can be ignorant of things, and yet, if you work hard. and pay attention you can do a good job of it”
14. “I don’t feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting.”
15. “There is something very pleasing about the principles of science and the rules of math, because they are so inevitable and so harmonious – in the abstract, anyway.”
