Your superhuman power was to be able not to feel. Is it there inside everybody, this self that comes out while you are in captivity? You become the closest approximation of yourself that can tolerate living there.

The ground was silvery, as if some stars had fallen there.

In Lullabies, I wanted to capture what I remembered of the drunken babbling of unfortunate twelve-year-olds: their illusions, their ludicrously bad choices, their lack of morality and utter disbelief in cause and effect

Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

Adolescents are still children in that they can't yet tell the difference between make believe and fiction.

Somewhere, a sparrow is singing in B minor.

I have an artistic temperament, which is a really tragic thing.