My writing has to excite people and depict or include their experiences. That's part of my process - to go out and interact with people. It's very much like an archival process. I understand that the Brothers Grimm would go out and get people talking so they could document folk tales that weren't being documented any other way. I try to offer a little bit of myself - some experience from my life that evokes stories in other people.

No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.

It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.

The same way a compact disk isn't responsible for what's recorded on it, that's how we are. You're about as free to act as a programmed computer. You're about as one-of-a-kind as a dollar bill.

Just for the record, the weather today is increasing turmoil with a possible physical and emotional breakdown.

Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.

Rant would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.