There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.

Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.

Your heartbreak is just another version of the same old story.

Your presence here is is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren’t.

You described the feeling you’d always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn’t worry quite so much about why.

You know, Im always surprised when I read profiles, and they make me sound so jaded. I am so not jaded.