Clavo saca clavo. Nothing sacas nothing, you reply. No one will ever be like her.

Used to be in the old days, only the pulp writers wrote like machines. Now everybody is expected to be literary John Henrys. So in that context someone like me is an anomaly.

If you were a nerd computer geek in 1982, the amount of isolation you felt - at least what I experienced, or the kids I knew, the isolation they felt - was almost total. They were not part of society; no one thought they were cool.

I am a chatty person, but colossally discreet.

You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There's a lot out there.

Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him.

I was really drawn to thinking about the women in my life. Thinking about my mother, who's a very powerful force on me. And I have these two very strong sisters who took up a lot of imaginary space in my life.