Ideas come at any moment -- except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper. My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done.

Most people would never admit it, but they'd been bitching since they were born. As soon as their head popped out into that bright delivery-room light, nothing had been right. Nothing had been as comfortable or felt so good. Just the effort it took to keep your stupid physical body alive, just finding food and cooking it and dishwashing, the keeping warm and bathing and sleeping, the walking and bowel movements and ingrown hairs, it was all getting to be too much work.

You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real.

And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.

Don't do this. I love you. Don't shut me out.

You can't base your life on the past or the present. You have to tell me about your future.

I am the cause of all my upsets. I am my worst enemy.