The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't now, I couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

I blundered into writing.

I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?

The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.