I Came From An Anxious, Overly Intense

I Used To Write In A Local Coffee Shop, But There Was Another Guy, Another Writer, Who Kept Sitting In My Favorite Seat. I Would Show Up, And He Would Be There, And I Would Get Exiled To A Couch Or Something, And It Would Throw Me Off My Game.

There Is Really No End To Life's Little Humiliations.

Most People Are Blind To Magic. They Move Thru A Blank And Empty World. They’re Bored With Their Lives And There’s Nothing They Can Do About It. They’re Eaten Alive By Longing And They’re Dead Before They Die.

Every Year The Literary Press Praises Dozens If Not Hundreds Of Novels To The Skies, Asserting Explicitly Or Implicitly That These Books Will Probably Not Be Suffering Water Damage In The Basements Of Their Authors' Houses 20 Years From Now. But Historically, Anyway, That's Not The Way The Novelistic Ecology Works.

As A Teenager In Brooklyn Quentin Had Often Imagined Himself Engaged In Martial Heroics, But After This He Knew, As A Cold Immutable Fact, That He Would Do Anything Necessary, Sacrificing Whatever Or Whomever He Had To, To Avoid Risking Exposure To Physical Violence. Shame Never Came Into It. He Embraced His New Identity As A Coward. He Would Run In The Other Direction. He Would Lie Down And Cry And Put His Arms Over His Head Or Play Dead. It Didn't Matter What He Had To Do, He Would Do It And Be Glad.