Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.

What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you.

It's my feeling that any writer can get an emotion into a story without being sentimental as long as the emotion is dealt with honestly, with sufficient clarity, and detail.

There's nothing to talk about to strangers anymore, if you know what I mean. Everything I want to say, I say to her.

You are a real find and you keep me satisfied, up to a point. After all, I'm a malcontent and you can't change that.

At its best, fiction is not a diversion but a means of knowing the world.

In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to you psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely.