Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.

Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.

Art doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it.

I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.