In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

As Siri says, who is deeply involved with neuroscience, emotion consolidates memory, and I think that's true.

Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.

The real is always way ahead of what we can imagine.

Solitary. But not in the sense of being alone. Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale. Solitary in the sense of retreat. In the sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else.

I think there might be some pressure released while I'm doing autobiographical work, but afterwards everything remains the same.

I don't like that word [memoir]. Whenever my publishers have wanted to use it, I've told them to take it away.