[...] the inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race [...]

I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.

Normally when I read, I don't like music playing.

You don't just - you often have to defend the freedoms of people you don't like, you know, whose work you don't like, because freedom of speech is not just for serious people. It's also for trashy people. So, and, unfortunately, this is at the trashy end of the scale.

Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.

But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?

I don't like books that play to the gallery, but I've become more concerned with telling a story as clearly and engagingly as I can.