Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.

On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

Every novelist should possess a hermaphroditic imagination.

It was the combination of many factors... With most people, suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty.

The window gave onto a view of dove-gray roofs and balconies, each one containing the same cracked flowerpot and sleeping feline. It was as if the entire city of Paris had agreed to abide by a single understated taste. Each neighbor was doing his or her own to keep up standards, which was difficult because the French ideal wasn't clearly delineated like the neatness and greenness of American lawns, but more of a picturesque disrepair. It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.

You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.

Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has.