“Crystal and Starbucks had saved my life. Saved me from my pursuit of empty symbols, but also my anxiety about a fear-filled superficial life that hadn't been, in the end, helpful or even enjoyable for me”

“You saved me from my life.”

“It struck me, sharp and hard, that I had been given so many chances to save my soul that my entire life had been constructed around these chances! That was my nature - going from temptation to temptation, not to sin, but to be redeemed.”

“Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield,But to my own strength.Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,But for the patience to win my freedom.”

“Writing was never work for me. It had been the same for as long as I could remember: turn on the radio to a classical music station, light a cigarette or a cigar, open the bottle. The typer did the rest. All I had to do was be there. The whole process allowed me to continue when life itself offered very little, when life itself was a horror show. There was always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.”

“He does not just fill my body, my womanhood. He fills me. My heart, my soul. He fills the horrible emptiness that has gaped inside me all my life.”