one of the privileges given to those who’ve avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.

You have to wait until tomorrow to find out what tomorrow will bring.

My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, reaching the summit after a long and arduous ordeal. You overcome your limitations, or you don’t, one or the other.

What’s crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you’ve set for yourself.

Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

If you don’t keep repeating a mantra of some sort to yourself, you’ll never survive.

Still, it’s pretty wonderful to watch these pretty girls run. As I do, I’m struck by an obvious thought: One generation takes over from the next. This is how things are handed over in this world, so I don’t feel so bad if they pass me. These girls have their own pace, their own sense of time. And I have my own pace, my own sense of time. The two ar