I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).

You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.

If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddamn place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically.

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.

He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.