I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?

No matter what terror the earth could produce - winds, seas - a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature swirling inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world - no flower or stone - as a single hello from a human being.

I did think reviewers were supposed to be polite about story collections - collections are rather delicate creatures in the literary environment - but not everybody got this memo, I guess.

Perhaps we had at last reached that stage of intimacy that destroys intimacy.

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

Adults are living increasingly as children: completely in their imaginations. Reading Harry Potter while every newspaper in the country goes out of business. They know so little that is real.

I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely.