Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.

I'm giving you my life to prove to myself I can, I really can love somebody. Even when I'm not getting paid, I can give love and happiness and charm. You see, I can handle the baby food and the not talking and being homeless and invisible, but I have to know that I can love somebody. Completely and totally, permanently and without hope of reward, just as an act of will, I will love somebody.

some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.

Think of spoiled cat food and ulcerated cankers and expired donor organs. That's how beautiful she looks.

I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.

If you're going to read this, don't bother.

When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd never stare long enough to get if they'd even just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.