Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.

But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.

This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.

Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.

Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.

They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself -- ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide.

To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.