... survival is the least of my desires.

And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.

I do not write about nice people. I am not nice people.

I told her, Don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I were worth your life - the life we make together. Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.

Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems. Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time. And I loved her for that.