“I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.”

“I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.”

“Life is an adventure! So live it up!”

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”

“i wondered if i would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself..”

“Anything that doesn't fit this mode has been shoved into an area of lesser solemnity called 'genre fiction,' and it is here that the spy thriller and the crime story and the adventure story and the supernatural tale and the science fiction, however excellently written, must reside, sent to their rooms, as it were, for the misdemeanor of being enjoyable in what is considered a meretricious way. They invent, and we all know they invent, at least up to a point, and they are, therefore, not about 'real life,' which ought to lack coincidences and weirdness and action-adventure, unless the adventure story is about war, of course, where anything goes, and they are, therefore, not solid.”