Irony is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, the deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up... They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won't drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that's fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.

I think that some laughter comes from escaped horror, doesn't it?

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

The first book I fell in love with was 'Little Toot,' the story of an adorable tugboat operating out of New York Harbor.