And I was -- this is just how I was afraid you'd take it. I knew it, that you'd think this means you were right to be afraid all the time and never feel secure or trust me. I knew it'd be "See, you're leaving after all when you promised you wouldn't." I knew it but I'm trying to explain anyway, okay? And I know you probably won't understand this either, but --wait-- just try to listen and maybe absorb this, okay? Ready? Me leaving is not the confirmation of all your fears about me. It is not. It's because of them.

I find in myself a need to get very away.

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

What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.

For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved.

Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism.