All you have to do is wait,” I explained. “Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair eye on everything. If you do that, you just naturally know what to do. But everyone’s always too busy. They’re too talented, their schedules are too full. They’re too interested in themselves to think about what’s fair.

It's just like sex; when [a book is] finished, it's finished.

Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.

But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn’t it?

I'm not afraid to die. What I'm afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind.

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.

I was dying. Like all the other people who live in this world.