In the evenings there's been thunder, a distant bumping and stumbling, like God on a sullen binge.

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.

There's something final about saying you were married once. It's like saying you were dead once. It shuts them up.

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

Yelling is a form of publishing

Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there's a little utopia.

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.