Writing is fun - at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That's easy to manage.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds.

Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences.

Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good.

No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.

I can't understand nothingness. I can't understand it and I can't imagine it.