I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.

The reader can't take much for granted in a fiction where the scenery can eat the characters.

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Anyhow they’re always exceptions. But most women, their only relationship to a man is having. Either owning or being owned.

O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn't then.

Almost everything is double like that for adolescents; their lies are true and their truths are lies, and their hearts are broken by the world. They gyre and fall; they see through everything, and are blind.