You've got to be a good date for the reader.

In the water I am beautiful.

All people are insane. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.

No art is possible without a dance with death.

We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.

[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.

We are all experiments in enthusiasms, narrow and preordained.