Projecting yourself until everything is talking about you is, of course, a self-flattering form of self-pity

My skin was the border between the world and me.

I do have a sense of displacement as constant instability — the uninterrupted existence of everything that I love and care about is not guaranteed at all. I wait for catastrophes.

In the olden days, a memoir was something written by Churchill and people like that, because they had a grand experience and considered it useful for future generations. And then it became what it became - a public purging in which other people have the chance to judge you and then forgive you, perhaps learning something from your sorry example.

Where can you go from nowhere, except deeper into nowhere?

We hated pretentiousness; it was a form of self-hatred.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.