Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm.

I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.

You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs―the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate―the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.

I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.

I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.

An active and creative reader is a re-reader.

Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.