The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted.

He dares not concern himself with the future for fear of disturbing the present.

We are too kind, too willing--too unwilling too--reaching out blindly with a grasping hand but not knowing how to ask for what we don't even know we want.

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

Eventually, everything gets stuck between a pair of parentheses or buried in the bottom of a trunk.

Our friendship is made up of these brief frenzied exchanges, but the quality of our conversation, for all its feverish outpouring, is genuine.