Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear...Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.

The stories we sit up late to hear are love stories. It seems that we cannot know enough about this riddle of our lives. We go back and back to the same scenes, the same words, trying to scrape out the meaning. Nothing could be more familiar than love. Nothing else eludes us so completely.

More than sex. More than money. You know, life is not endless is it? Cash, cars, cocaine, and girls. It's more than that. And there is a spiritual dimension to people...we are driven to want something more.

I go on writing so that I will always have something to read.

I never cared about money.

Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.

I lay there, stretched out, looking at the one star visible through the tiny window of the room. Only connect. How can you do that when the connections are broken?