That was the moment he got the idea he possessed me in a certain way, and that was the moment I grew tired of him.

The thing we call romance is a diversion from something truer, which is life.

He must have smiled at me, though I don't really know, but I don't like to think that I would love someone who hadn't first smiled at me.

An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you.

Everything I do is because of writing. If I go for a walk, it's because I'm thinking of writing. I go look at flowers, I go look at the garden, I go look at a museum, but it's all coming back to writing.

That was the moment he got the idea he possessed me in a certain way, and that was the moment I grew tired of him.

Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this.