You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.

Chyerti—that’s us, demons and devils, small and big—are compulsive. We obsess. It’s our nature. We turn on a track, around and around; we march in step; we act out the same tales, over and over, the same sets of motions, while time piles up like yarn under a wheel. We like patterns. They’re comforting. Sometimes little things change—a car instead of a house, a girl not named Yelena. But it’s no different, not really. Not ever.

Autumn is the very soul of metamorphosis, a time when the world is poised at the door of winter - which is the door of death - but has not yet fallen. It is a world of contradictions: a time of harvest and plenty but also of cold and hardship. Here we dwell in the midst of life, but we know most keenly that all things must pass away and shrivel. Autumn turns the world from one thing into another. The year is seasoned and wise but not yet decrepit or senile.

It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.

I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.

I have tried to write stories that go into the underworld of myth and bring out life and fire — where the old world looked at a woman alone and immortal and said: she must long to die, I have tried to say: look at her live!

Respect me. Be proud, and if you love me, a little afraid, because love so often looks like fear. We are alike. We are alike.