They were all in their early thirties. An age at which it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life.

Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. Remember that. One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. I was struck by that and meant to try it, but knew I shouldn’t waste the milk.

One stroke of lightning does not have to lead anywhere, but to the next stroke of lightning.

It must have meant something, though, that at this turn of my life I grabbed up a book. Because it was in books that I would find, for the next few years, my lovers. They were men, not boys. They were self-possessed and sardonic, with a ferocious streak in them, reserves of gloom.

I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.

And did I not think then, What nonsense it is to suppose one man so different from another when all that life really boils down to is getting a decent cup of coffee and room to stretch out in?