Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.

I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

There's something nearly mystical about certain words and phrases that float through our lives. It's computer mysticism. Words that are computer generated to be used on products that might be sold anywhere from Japan to Denmark - words devised to be pronounceable in a hundred languages. And when you detach one of these words from the product it was designed to serve, the words acquires a chantlike quality.

It's true that some of us become better writers by living long enough. But this is also how we become worse writers. The trick is to die in between.

Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is 'I know this feeling. I was here before'.

Dying was just an extended version of Ash Wednesday.

I was always younger than anyone around me. One day it began to change.