But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years.

A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.

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

Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide.

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

Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.