As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.

Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one in ten enjoyed the place and said he'd come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it another way, it didn't matter if nine out of ten didn't like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place.

What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me.

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words. He had never told anyone about it, and he probably never would.

Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.

There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.