When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

One of the odd things about being a writer is that you never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, Right. Now I understand how this is done.

My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.

The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind. (Fun fact.)

A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.

When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

And that phrase - 'sleeping like a baby.' Some blonde said it blithely on the subway the other day. I wanted to lie down next to her and scream for five hours in her ear.