When you let your mind go blank,' he said, 'or when you stop talking for a long time, something happens. Time becomes different. It goes away. It doesn't come back until you start to say something.

I don't fall in love anymore. Just like I don't get the mumps.

Never do I close my door behind me without being conscious that I am carrying out an act of charity towards myself.

Confronted with people who have power, and who enjoy using it, I turn into a different person, a baser and meaner one.

To want to understand is an attempt to recapture something we have lost.

Maybe it's wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.

The knives in my apartment are only sharp enough to open envelopes with. Cutting a slice of coarse bread is on the borderline of their ability. I don't need anything sharper. Otherwise, on bad days, it might easily occur to me that I could always go stand in the bathroom in front of the mirror and slit my throat. On such occasions it's nice to have the added security of needing to go downstairs and borrow a decent knife from a neighbor.