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

It was her first book, an indigo cover with a silver moonflower, an art nouveau flower, I traced my finger along the silver line like smoke, whiplash curves. ... I touched the pages her hands touched, I pressed them to my lips, the soft thick old paper, yellow now, fragile as skin. I stuck my nose between the bindings and smelled all the readings she had given, the smell of unfiltered cigarettes and the espresso machine, beaches and incense and whispered words in the night. I could hear her voice rising from the pages. The cover curled outward like sails.

Writing mirrors the interior self. You know, any book is like the perfect blueprint of the psyche of the author.

When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

A novel is like a dream in which everyone is you. They’re all parts of yourself.

I took the volume to a table, opened its soft, ivory pages... and fell into it as into a pool during dry season.

Darkness coiled between what he wanted them to believe and the self he despised. It only made him more alone. How could you save someone when he didn't let you kno him? What a waste. The beauty he murdered in this place. He could never see what he had, only what he failed to achieve.