But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art.

What I have always wanted more than revenge is to bring the other person to recognition of the pain they caused, so they essentially say, "I will never do that again."

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

I tell you, we would be hard put to determine what is more evil -- religion or the pure idea. The intervention of the supernatural or the elegant abstract solution! Both have bathed this earth in suffering; both have brought the human race literally and figuratively to its knees.

Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt

I assume I don't need an introduction.

The fact that I loved you was the greatest lie I have ever lived.