I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.

It is possible to be truly mad and to still exist upon scraps of life.

from the beginning, through the middle years and up to the end: too bad, too bad, too bad.

Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don't give a damn.

people are not good to each other. perhaps if they were our deaths would not be so sad.

The blankets had fallen off and I stared down at her white back, the shoulder blades sticking out as if they wanted to grow into wings, poke through that skin. Little blades. She was helpless.

Pull a string, a puppet moves ... each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand - and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha ... can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know.