You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.

Claudia... you've been a very very naughty little girl.

I will write things, he was thinking. I will write something meaningful and wonderful someday. I can do that. And I'll dedicate it to you because you're the first person who ever made me think I could.

Oh, the lies that I have told myself and others. I knew it yet I didn't know.

Being liberated means reading what you want to read, and fantasizing about what you want to fantasize about.

Protect your voice and your vision. If going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don’t do it. … Do what gets you to write and not what blocks you. … Don’t take any guff off anybody.

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!