Be kind. Always if you have a choice, be kind.

And I realized that I’d tolerated him this long because of self-doubt.

Yes. To write a novel is to risk my sanity. The deeper I get into the suffering and conflict of the characters, into the very situations and thoughts and feelings that make the novel worthwhile, the worse I feel, and the more likely I am to be severely depressed when the book is finished. There is no avoiding this: it is the result of attempting to tell all you know, to reach for the stars, to write what matters.

We’re going to die and not even know. We’ll never know, and all this meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won’t any longer be witnesses to it. We won’t have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We’ll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing!

I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful days. I have a beautiful house here.

Oh, but when love is reached through suffering, it has a power it can never gain through innocence.

The only power that exists is inside ourselves.