Thanksgiving. It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don't forget indigestion. I wasn't different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me.

I still have a little whiskey left and therefore a chance.

Most of the world was mad. And the part that wasn't mad was angry. And the part that wasn't mad or angry was just stupid. I had no chance. I had no choice. Just hang on and wait for the end. It was hard work. It was the hardest work imaginable.

they simply never understand, do they, that sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth?

I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse, I did but didn't.

it is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.

The secret is writing down one simple line after another.