For me, the melancholy of the late XXth Century is walking late at night by the Mont Blanc pen store and seeing these things always strike me as simulacra of luxury items. They seem like fakes.

Things aren't different. Things are things.

A lot of the buildings [in Toronto] around Yonge and Bloor is the architectural equivalent of Kipper Ties and 8" collar points. It's ghastly and no amount of street-level retail glitz can lift it.

The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.

Novels set in imaginary futures are necessarily about the moment in which they are written.

Enlightenment is "being," and it grows; it's end is serenity.

I was once really close to sitting down and having a conversation with a shadowy young woman who is reputed have become a millionaire by investing in Beanie Babies. She was someone that a couple people claimed to know, she seemed to exist, but she remained shadowy.