Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.

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.

A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.

You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.

Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.