This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash.

The punishment – to the body, the brain, the spirit – a man must endure to become even a moderately good boxer is inconceivable to most of us whose idea of personal risk is largely ego-related or emotional.

[Emily] Dickinson, our supreme poet of inwardness.

What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.

Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.

It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.