Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it.

To the west, the Pacific Ocean, which revulses me, for its vastness cannot be fitted into any box.

For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.

Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?