The Invention of Solitude

At his bravest moments, he embraces meaninglessness as the first principle, and then he understands that his obligation is to see what is in front of him (even though it is also inside him) and to say what he sees.

Speak or die. And for as long as you go on speaking, you will not die.

He is in his room on Varick Street. His life has no meaning. The book he is writing has no meaning. There is the world, and the things one encounters in the world, and to speak of them is to be in the world.

If there is to be any justice at all, it must be a justice for everyone. No one can be excluded, or else there is no such thing as justice.

A voice that speaks, a woman’s voice that speaks, a voice that speaks stories of life and death, has the power to give life.

Written language absolves one of the need to remember much of the world, for the memories are stored in the words.

For this is the function of the story: to make a man see the thing before his eyes by holding up another thing to view.

For it is only in the darkness of solitude that the work of memory begins.

Will you hear me? Do you know how much I love you? I could never tell you how much I love you. I cannot tell you even now. I speak to you, only to you. You are with me always, and I who was such a wild and angry one and never learned to weep simple tears—now I weep and weep and weep