It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge..

Never mind. Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us aas real girls, real fl….

What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question..

People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart..

When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your….

The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and resp….

Every novel is-at the beginning-the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space..

So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to….

Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and I think they'll say no..

I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myse….

Americans don't usually have to think about Canadian-American relations, or, as they would put it, American-Canadian relations. Why think about somet….

If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't ….

What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Lite….

Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion...Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, ….

If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge….

­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting..

For drinking Life there are two cups: The No Cup is bitter, the Yes Cup is yummy -- Now, which one would you rather have in your tummy?.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist..

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants..

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything….

Well. Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, lig….