I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.

All those years on the psychiatrist's couch and suddenly the couch is moving. Good God, she is on that couch when the big one hits. Maidy didn't tell you, but you know what her doctor said? She sprang from the couch and said, "My God, was that an earthquake?" The doctor said this: "Did it feel like an earthquake to you?

I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.

What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.

As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.

I'm not good at small talk; I'm not good at big talk; and medium talk just doesn't come up.

I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.