The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.

You spend your entire life becoming God and then you die.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.

During the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure,and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could ever go into wide distribution.

I spent my life attacking everything because I was too afraid to risk creating anything.

We're all of us haunted and haunting.

I am not loved. I am not a beautiful soul. I am not a good-natured, giving person. I am not anybody's savior.