I'm never going to get married." "You're crazy." Buddy brightened. "You'll change your mind." "No. My mind's made up.

... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.

The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper, Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars Letting in the light, peephole after peephole--- A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.

No day is safe from news of you.

I felt the mask crumple, the great poisonous store of corrosive ashes begin to spew out of my mouth.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

You cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time.