I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don't get any patients.

When neither high purpose nor the categorical imperatives of religion will do, the only argument against suicide is life itself. You pause and attend: the heart beats in your chest; outside, the trees are thick with new leaves, a swallow dips over them, the light moves, people are going about their business.

I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don't get any patients.

Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level.

The point is that it looks like gambling because the language of the game is money.

When you make a bet, you're saying something.

Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation, seemed merely a temporary halt on my steady descent through layer after layer of depression, like an elevator stopping for a moment on the way down to the basement.