I am not a nurse escorting six lunatics to the ice cream parlor.

I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.

It's important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there's a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there's a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there's a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.

My family had a lot of characteristics - achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations - that all seemed to be recessive in me.

You have to have a somewhat cold heart to be a writer.

It's one of the reasons I became a writer, to be able to smoke in peace.

Disease [is] as one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.