Mirrors and images. Or sex and love. These are two separate systems that we miserably try to link.

I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

I am not comfortable with abstract writing, stories that look like essays: you have to see, I need to see.

There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world.

People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night.