Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

My own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I’ve decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there. . . . Do you identify with a distaste/fear about sentimentality? Do you agree that, past a certain line, such distaste can turn everything arch and sneering and too ironic? Or do you have your own set of abstract questions to drive yourself nuts with?

Do not underestimate objects.

The man who knows his limitations, has none.

Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.

I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty which probably doesn’t augur well for my longevity

Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving. ... The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years.