Apparent victims always give you the most remarkable looks—and I do write from experience.

Here is the momentum of your past choices.

What words can’t you say? What must never be expressed?

Why does solving a problem create more problems?

Nothing shakes my confusion: how are these new words?

What you want in a Bellow novel is to hear the vibrations: the sorcery is Bellow’s ear for the street.

Make the faster parts slow, and make the slower parts fast.

How does speed change our perception of distance?

For every jittery student, there’s a jittery teacher.

A lot of trouble could have been avoided if Mr. Darcy had simply sent a text.

I once ordered breakfast in Budapest and was brought a cake.

When a key character plops onto the page–silent and defiant.

Leaving the trail you took yesterday, the one you’re expected to take tomorrow.

An inability to meet expectations: straining to compensate for lost words.

What you remember isn’t what you find.

Where the sun falls and time doesn’t exist.

How to separate the gallery wall from the backyard bin, the catwalk from the passé, the joke that hits from the off-beat crack?

Here is a relentlessness that must be resisted.

What about all those hardcovers that seethe with hatred?

Why do writers distrust sentimentality?