Detroit's a great music town. If your interaction with it was mainly musical, I'm sure you have a good opinion of the place.

I'm constantly having doubts and moments of depression and then excitement and then back into the slough of despond.

Virgin suicide What was that she cried? No use in stayin' On this holocaust ride She gave me her cherry She's my virgin suicide

When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheads girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing to her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the golden highlights in the strawberry hair. it was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.

My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood.

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.

Every letter was a love letter.