“I don’t know what it means to live.”

“I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it.”

“There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.”

“I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.”

“Somebody once said if it’s something a single book can explain,it’s not worth having explained. What I mean is don’t leap toany conclusions.”

“I decided to go swimming. I don’t know how to explain this, but I wanted to purge my body of something by exercising it to the limit. Purge it—of what? I spent some time wondering about that. Purge it of what?I didn’t know.”

“I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be..... But that’s the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”