I am not one of these people who instantly takes umbrage when he's corrected or - I love being corrected.

We walked for some time, and grew to know each other, as best as we'd allow. These are some of the high points. They lack continuity. I don't apologize. I merely pointed it out, adding with some truth, I feel, that most liaisons lack continuity. We find ourselves in odd places at various times, and for a brief span we link our lives to others and then, our time elapsed, we move apart. Through a haze of pain occasionally, usually through a veil of memory that clings, then passes, sometimes as though we have never touched.

I usually say I write for the smartest, cleverest, wittiest audience I know, and that's me.

Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.

You're a writer. And that's something better than being a millionaire. Because it's something holy.

You must never be afraid to go there.

I don't know how you perceive my mission as a writer, but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. It is not my job to lull you with a false sense of the rightness of the universe. This wonderful and terrible occupation of recreating the world in a different way, each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. I stir the soup. I inconvenience you. I make your nose run and your eyes water.