Pop, I'm nothing! I'm nothing, Pop. Can't you understand that? There's no spite in it any more. I'm just what I am, that's all.

The world is an oyster but you don't crack it open on a mattress

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism.

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.

Memory inevitably romanticizes, pressing reality to recede like pain.

There is a kind of perverse unity forming among us, born, I think, of the discontent of all classes of people with the endless frustration of life.