Norman Rush

Literature is humanity talking to itself.

The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading.

It was a standard fantasy when you fell in love to imagine you could go back in time and find your beloved growing up, appear there, save him or her, get together as adolescents, by magic, and go on together, fighting for one another, into old age, never wavering.

Small breasts are best for the long haul.

The characters write the plot. Their natures do.

There is no permanent friendship between men, among men. Something goes wrong, somebody marries the wrong person, somebody advances too fast, somebody converts, somebody refuses good advice or bad advice, it didn't matter. It went up in a flash

One thing you distinctly never want to hear a man you're interested in say softly is that his favorite book in the whole world is The Golden Notebook. Here you are dealing with a liar from the black lagoon and it's time to start feeling in your purse for carfare.

Very goodlooking people are as a rule more forgetful than the median. Their mothers start it and the world at large continues it, handing them things, picking things up for them, smoothing their vicinity out for them in every way. I on the other hand remember everything.