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.

Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom.

It was my misfortune-or salvation-to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality.

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.

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

Don’t ask me those questions! Don’t ask me what life means or how we know reality or why we have to suffer so much. Don’t talk about how nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining like oil in the sun. I don’t want to hear about the tiger in the corner or the Angel of Death or the phone calls from John the Baptist.

As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn't have.