Writing talent is similar to the art of chatting up a girl. You can improve to a certain degree through practice, but basically you are either born with it or you aren't.

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.

I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it.

Is this what it means to go back to square one? Most likely. He had nothing left to lose, other than his life.

I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It's a parallel thing in me.