The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness ... has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I'm going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.

Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.

The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.

It's probably hard to feel any sort of Romantic spiritual connection to nature when you have to make your living from it.

There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.