I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the 'monkey mind' -- the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl.

The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters.

Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision.

To show a longing for anything that one cannot have, for instance, is not a clever position.

I can honestly say [that writing] is the best life there is, because you get to live within the realm of your own mind, and that is a profoundly rare human privilege.

We live in this society where you must constantly be reinventing yourself. The big question is what are you doing next. The only thing they want is composed of these three elements: They want you to do it the exact same way because they want more of it; but they want it to be totally different; and they want it to be better. That's all you have to do. You just have to do something that's exactly the same, totally different, and better.

It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage; rather, it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around us.