I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.

Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.

We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there’s no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It’s in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark.

It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.