“writers create what they do out of their own frightful agony and blood and mushed-up guts and horrible mixed-up insides. the more they are in touch with their insides the better they create.”
“what could he lose? for the next few days, he would follow any vagrant notion that came into his head, for who knew where such a notion might lead?”
“my own mind is a tenement. some elevators work. there are orange peels and muggings in the halls. squatters and double locks on some floors, a few flowered window boxes, half-dressed bachelors cooling on the outside fire steps; plaster falls.”
“i was like joan of arc, or hamlet, but born into the wrong life—the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible. there’s no better way to say it: i was not myself back then. i was someone else. i was eileen.”
“the game doesn’t change the way you sleep or wash your face or chew your food. it changes nothing but your life.”
“no one knows themselves. who are you? you don’t know. then you come to the zone of interest, and it tells you who you are.”
