The affectionate farce I make of him ignores the ways I feel his lack of love for me. But we are managing.

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.

Awkwardness is where tension is, and tension is where the story is. It's also where the comedy is, which I'm interested in; when it resolves it tends to resolve toward melancholy, a certain resignation, which I find interesting as well.

Nothing's a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.

Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.

Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.

You emptied the top rack of the dishwasher but not the bottom, so the clean dishes have gotten all mixed up with the dirty ones - and now you want to have sex?