That the world I was in could be soft, lovely, and nourishing was more than I could bear, and so I stood there and wept, for I didn't want to love one more thing in my life, didn't want one more thing that could make my heart break into a million little pieces at my feet.

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.

I've come to see that I'm saying something that people generally do not want to hear.

I'm trying to earn a living in the way that is most enjoyable to me. I love the world of literature, and I hope to support myself in it.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.

All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.

The shadow of my mother danced around the room to a tune that my own shadow sang.