Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take.

A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.

What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.

These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.

Any assault on the borders of perception is going to seem rash at first.

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

There are two categories of writers, it could be said: The author who is just a voice, and the one who is also creating a picture. I belong to the latter, because I have an acute visual sense.