If you're writing fiction, you're dealing with characters who, themselves, will have heartfelt sentiments but who, themselves, live in this culture right now and thus face all the impediments to sort of dealing with those parts of their lives that, you know, that we did. So it would be not only silly but unrealistic to have a character saying that kind of stuff.

The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.

I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.

There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it.

One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.

I knew my limitations and the limitations of the courts I played on, and adjusted thusly. I was at my best in bad conditions.

The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed yourself to not.