How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?

Off-camera lives are unverifiable.

I see contemporary violence as a kind of sardonic response to the promise of consumer fulfilment in America.

If you know you're worth nothing, only a gamble with death can gratify your vanity.

It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

Prayer is a practical strategy, the gaining of temporal advantage in the capital markets of Sin and Remission.

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.