“I don't like taking from anyone. I'd rather be a giver, though not for any worthy reason. It's about control, obviously. If I give, I control; if I take, I am controlled. If someone offers me something for free I am at once suspicious.”

“If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending...But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone.You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.”

“I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.”

“SHE OF NOBODY ELSE'S BIDDING: That is who I am now--someone who has not done what anyone else said since July 2008, though not because I am either disobedient or a slacker.”

“I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.”

“For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.… I think it’s very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don’t know where it’ll go.”

“By now you know: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, "Take me to your leaders." Even I--unused to your ways though I am--would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them.Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths."These are worth it. These are what I have come for.”