Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.

There's a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can't get anywhere else.

I collect records. And cats. I don't have any cats right now. But if I'm taking a walk and I see a cat, I'm happy.

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.

But if something did happen, it happened. Whether it's right or wrong. I accept everything that happens, and that's how I became the person I am now.

The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes.