Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.

I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.

Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.

Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

Those beliefs about the essential goodness or beauty of the world are fundamentally paper-thin bullshit. There's not an essential belief that isn't a contingent belief. It could all be destroyed in a second, at any second. And I have an issue with that.