For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.… I think it’s very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don’t know where it’ll go.

“How shrunk, how dwindled, in our timesCreation's mighty seed -For Man has broke…”

“There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine …”

“If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending...But if it's …”

“but nothing I ever gave was good for you;it was like white bread to goldfish.th…”