When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own."

"The human imagination. . . has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open."

"You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events."

"I knew I'd been living in Berkeley too long when I saw a sign that said 'Free firewood" and my first thought was "Who was Firewood and what did he do?""

"[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. . . ."