Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care at all resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in literature.

Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative "criticism" isn't criticism at all: it's just nasty, "writerly" cliché and invective.

Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.

Did I throw the most important thing perhaps, by accident, away?

Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.

Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care at all resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in literature.

I love the laconic. Clearly, I am not of their number.