It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'--and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

My writing is full of lives I might have led.

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

What you call your personality, you know? --it's not like actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It's more like a flame. A flame can be upright, and a flame can flicker in the wind, a flame can be extinguished so there's no sign of it, like it had never been.

Betrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.

Nothing comes of so many things, if you have patience.