When we finished the kiss she said laughing, I can taste your loneliness - it tastes like vinegar. That annoyed me. Everyone knows loneliness tastes like cold potato soup.

[I'll teach you] how not to leave the windows of your heart open when it looks like rain and how everyone has a stump where something necessary was amputated.

It's the idea of baggage. When you hear about people in their 40s boast about not having baggage. I think having no baggage is your baggage. That means that you haven't thrown yourself into the mess of life.

The universe doesn't really care if you bounce back. It doesn't feel that weird to write about paralysis or being in hospital or losing a child or, you know, splitting up with your wife, because that's just life.

What a nasty act of cruelty, giving a dying man his last wish. Don't you realize he doesn't want it? His real wish is not to die.

Negotiating with memories isn't easy: how to choose between those panting to be told, those still ripening, those already shriveling, and those destined to be mangled by language and come out pulverized?

… she gave me a look that deftly combined tenderness with revulsion. To this day the memory of that look still visits me like a Jehovah’s Witness: uninvited and tireless.