I do have people in mind when I write. I don't know precisely who they are, however, or how many of them there are.

When you find out who you are, you will no longer be innocent. That will be sad for others to see. All that knowledge will show on your face and change it. But sad only for others, not for yourself. You will feel you have a kind of wisdom, very mistaken, but a mistake of some power to you and so you will sadly treasure it and grow it.

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

Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun.

I wished for eternal and intriguing muteness. I would be the Mysterious Dumb Girl, the Enigmatic Elf. The human voice no longer interested me.

You chose love like a belief, a faith, a place, a box for one's heart to knock against like a spook in the house.

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.