“I wrote this piece because my mailbox was full of bills, junk mail, and lettuce, but not a single letter from Andre Breton. So I decided I’d write to him (though I did eat my first two drafts).”

“I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.”

“I want to be sitting in front of my computer, where you can press a button to block out your junk mail. These two are my junk mail.”

“All my life my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.” andre breton”

“It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I’d written the story. I hadn’t—I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It’s in there somewhere—but I have to find it. I’ll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.”

“It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.”