I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the schemes could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No eye was watching me.

A young woman with long hair and a short white halter dress walks through the casino at the Riviera in Las Vegas at one in the morning. It was precisely this moment that made Play It As It Lays begin to tell itself to me.

The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.

I closed the box and put it in a closet. There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.

I ... have another cup of coffee with my mother. We get along very well, veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood.

I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.