At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.

I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life.

So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.

I was never a man of great ambition I cried too easily I didn't have a head for science Words often failed me While others prayed I only moved my lips

...we take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.

My first novel, 'Man Walks Into a Room,' is about a man who's lost his memory and has to start a second life. On one level, it's about how we create a coherent sense of self.

But loneliness, true loneliness, is impossible to accustom oneself to, and while I was still young I thought of my situation as somehow temporary, and did not stop hoping and imagining that I would meet someone and fall in love...Yes, there was a time before I closed myself off to others.