Size is relative. If everyone is fat, no-one is fat

Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly.

I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.

How lucky we are, when we're spared what we think we want!

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

The existence of other people is essentially awkward.

In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.