If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure.

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.

shopping for clothes is like masturbation - everyone does it, but it isn't very interesting and therefore should be done alone, in an embarrassed fashion, and never be the topic of party conversation.

(Such a life)engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart.

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

Love drains you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight. You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop.