We lie in order to tolerate our existence and, most of all, we lie to ourselves.

I no longer protect myself from the world I grew up in. Rather, today I try to protect the feelings I have for that world, the emotional space where my desire to write first took hold, and still grows.

Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing.

I don't have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.

Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.

Climbing the economic ladder has been very hard for me; I still feel a great deal of guilt towards those I left behind.

It's the people who love us or hate us - or both - who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.