And yet still I worried. I like being a person. I wanted to keep at it. Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

There's not a lot of room for un-ironic emotion in contemporary culture. I think that irony is an important tool in dealing with the world as we find it. It's a tool of protection, but it can also be a tool of incision to get to some truth. But along the way maybe we've lost some of what I think of as the power of straightforward emotion and earnestness and seriousness.

I was born into Bolívar's labyrinth, and so I must believe in the hope of Rabelais' Great Perhaps.

...all I have to do is stay in between the lines and make sure that no one is too close to me and I am not too close to anyone and keep leaving. Maybe it felt like this for her, too, but I could never feel like this alone.

People are such idiots. As if there's something wrong with being in love.

That feeling of finishedness does not come all at once, and it is not easily won, but I think once you get there it is hard to go back.

Some people have lives; some people have music.