“That it would be easy was the whole point.”

“Because I was alone, even the mundane seemed charged with meaning....My emotions were similarly amplified: the highs were higher; the periods of despair were deeper and darker.”

“I was dimly aware that I might be getting in over my head. But that only added to the scheme’s appeal. That it wouldn’t be easy was the whole point.”

“In compulsively keeping myself out of view, I was participating, without realizing it, in a rich New York tradition. Loners and shut-ins and hermits are what keep New York City from imploding. If all the people who never leave their apartments in New York City suddenly left their apartments, the city's infrastructure would crumble.”

“Write each day as if no one will see it, yet write in a way as if the whole world will see it.”

“The whole city stopped - And this is a pause worth savouring, because the world will soon be complicated again.”

“It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.”