...you found you were saying yes when you meant no, and “We’ve got to be together in this thing” when you meant the very opposite ... and then you were face to face, in total darkness, with the knowledge that you didn’t know who you were. And how could anyone else be blamed for that?

And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life.

Acting might bring on emotional exhaustion, but writing tired your brains out. Writing led to depression and insomnia and walking around all day with a haggard look.

People did change, and a change could be a bloom as well as a withering.

Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.

I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart.

Remember what Anatole France said about the dog masturbating on your leg--'Sure, it's honest, but who needs it?