Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment. If one recognizes the difference and prepares oneself - it is extraordinarily brave. Because when it comes to certain human miseries, the only witnesses should be the pavement and maybe the trees. (Gareth van Meer)

Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.

In college I studied '60s and '70s radicalism, student activism, forms of political violence, groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New Left.

Always live your life with your biography in mind," Dad was fond of saying. "Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason, but at the very least you will be living grandly.

Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you.

Look at Picasso. O’Neill. Tennessee Williams. Capote. Were these shiny happy people spreading sunshine? No. Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work.

I haven't always been a writer and I suppose I tiptoed around the idea of writing full time, because it's so isolating.