“Most times, my mind is just an ongoing, present-tense, first-person monologue. It's like I'm writing a novel.”

“It was like being trapped forever in the present tense of the first line of a first reader.”

“Why honey, don't you want to get dressed?"My mother took care never to tell me to do anything. She would only reason with me sweetly, like one intelligent, mature person with another. It's almost three in the afternoon." I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't got time to change into this and change into that.”

“I want to write. I've already told my mother: That's what I want to do-write. No answer the first time. Then she asks, Write what? I say, Books, novels. [...] She's against it, it's not worthy, it's not real work, it's nonsense. Later she said, A childish idea.”

“This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.”

“I'm not talking to anyone, I'm delivering a monologue. It's the inebriated man's prerogative.”