It's their skins I'm peeling," she said. "The skins of the insipid scribblers, which I graft to the page, creating monsters of meaninglessness.

I understood why she did it. At that moment I knew why people tagged graffiti on the walls of neat little houses and scratched the paint on new cars and beat up well-tended children. It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.

I felt suddenly cruel, like I´d told dmall children there was no tooth fairy, that it was just their Mom sneaking into their room after they went to bed.

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow.

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.

I've been depressed many times in my life. But under it all I'm an optimist.

That kind of tenderness couldn't be permitted to last. You only got a taste, enough to know what perfection meant, and then you paid for it the rest of your life. Like the guy chained to a rock, who stole fire. The gods made an eagle eat his liver for all eternity. You paid for every second of beauty you managed to steal.