I would never understand photography, the sneaky, murderous taxidermy of it.

(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.

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.

If I had a staff of even one person, or could tolerate a small amphetamine habit, or entertain the possibility of weekly blood transfusions, or had been married to Vera Nabokov, or had a housespouse of even minimal abilities, a literary life would be easier to bring about. (In my mind I see all your male readers rolling their eyes. But your female ones - what is that? Are they nodding in agreement? Are their fists in the air?)

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.

When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.

An agony. The exit like the entrance - but reserved. A palindrome: gut-tug.