I prefer the sorts of words that go their own way and are very choosy about where they end up. They don't fall for the first frillily syllabled thing to come along.

The narrators get into trouble and make fools of themselves with their perversely impulsive fondlings of the language. These people have retreated from the world, in which they keep falling short, and into language, where they fall even shorter. The narrators aggrandize their every plaint and lurid insight into verbal formations that betray their fatuity as speakers and even as hosts of their own bodies and souls.

It was my mother who taught me the one worthwhile thing: when they ask if you like what you see in the mirror, pretend that what they mean is what's behind you--the shower curtain, the tile, the wallpaper, whatever's there.

I don't like to read or write about life in its tiring entirety. Most days, months, even years are just filler between those few moments of modest but decisive catastrophe, misfortunes so fittingly flimsy they're almost welcome. The heart doesn't storm that often on its own, so you have to wait for something outside of yourself to get the wrecking ball rolling, and then you're set: you've finally got an impression to make on others - you're in the world distinctly and distinguishable now. It's only by our ravages that we're recognizable to each other at last.

I prefer the sorts of words that go their own way and are very choosy about where they end up. They don't fall for the first frillily syllabled thing to come along.

My writing isn’t a career or a craft or a hobby or anything like that. It is more like a tiny annex to my life, a little crawl space in which I occasionally end up by accident in the dark.

You get tired of always wondering anew why life has to take the place of youth.