Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?
It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.
If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.
I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.
In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself.
Age certainly hadn't conferred any smarts on me. Character maybe, but mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russian writers have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.