She was at once gracious and proud, loquacious and cagey. She saw immediately beyond the contours, the confines of the conversation. She could not be captured or contained. She refused to discuss what did not interest her, just as she refused to waste words on the dispensable and predictable elements of a plot. There are only certain moments in life that matter, she told me. Those were the moments in which meaning lay.
Jhumpa Lahiri on interviewing Mavis Gallant: http://nyr.kr/1hzHNVD (via newyorker)