True friendship resists time, distance and silence.

...memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.

Boredom, Timothy Duane assured me, is nothing more than anger without passion.

Fear is like a black cavern that is terrifying. Once you enter the cavern and explore it, you realize that you can get out of it, go through it and get out of it. Then there's another cavern that is just as big and terrifying, and you just go in and dwell in it and see what is the worst that can happen.

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up

Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape....For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.

The one that came really easy was the Japanese lover, because he's like a ghost in the book. He's always in the background like a spirit, like a shadow, almost. There's a very delicate line there.