Time is not outside us, but inside. Only we live with past, present, and future, and the present is too brief to experience anyway; it is retained afterward and then it is either codified or it slips into amnesia.

Libraries are sexual dream factories. The langour brings it on.

I think because mothers usually are the people who take care of us when we're little, and when we're little those mothers are omnipotent, perhaps men even more than women don't like to think about that dependency. That dependency is horror.

Like countless first-year medical students, immersed in the symptoms of one disease after another, I am alert to the tingles and pangs, the throbs and quivers of my mortal body, each one of which is potentially a sign of the end.

Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.

Not telling is just as interesting as telling I have found. Why speech, that short verbal journey from inside to outside can be excrutiating under certain circumstances is fascinating.

Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors.