...I know all about myself now, I know. You've told me so often. You haven't left me one rag of illusion to clothe myself in.

...morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.

I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.

No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us...a difficult moment when you are out of practice - a moment that makes you go cold, cold and wary.

It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?

The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.

Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.