In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself.

You always look so cool, like no matter what happens, it’s got nothing to do with you, but you’re not really like that. In your own way, you’re out there fighting as hard as you can, even if other people can’t tell by looking at you.

An unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.

I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it.

It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it.

I don't know, there's something about you. Say there's an hourglass: the sand's about to run out. Someone like you can always be counted on to turn the thing over.

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.