I read Nietzsche when I was a teenager and then I went back to reading him when I was in my thirties, and his voice spoke directly to me. Nietzsche is such a superb literary artist.

We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous; gray light streaking each bare branch, each single twig, along one side, making another tree, of glassy veins.

All a work of art can do is present the surface. I can't know the insides of people. I know very little about the inside of myself.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.