“I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.”

No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.

When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.

Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more–it’s sad, but that’s the truth.

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.

Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.

I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything else.

Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.

Love is the kind of thing that’s already happening by the time you notice it, that’s how it works, and no matter how old you get, that doesn’t change. Except that you can break it up into two entirely distinct types — love where there’s an end in sight and love where there isn’t.

If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.

It occurred to me that if I were a ghost, this ambiance was what I’d miss most: the ordinary, day-to-day bustle of the living. Ghosts long, I’m sure, for the stupidest, most unremarkable things.

You have the nicest window, you know? None of the others can even compete. It´s not flashy like the others, or bleary – your window gives of this nice, quiet light.

Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?

I really believe that no matter how old people get, they tend to change in certain ways depending on how people treat them – they change their colors.

That’s the advantage of insomnia. People who go to be early always complain that the night is too short, but for those of us who stay up all night, it can feel as long as a lifetime. You get a lot done

Me, when I’m utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody’s home, then I despise my own life – my birth, my upbringing, everything.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women

How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven’t I done time enough, haven’t I served my term? can’t I apply for a-pardon?

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had such an illumination, beginning my long search for the truth of the story and flashing light into the long two years ahead.

I have no problem whatsoever with allowing gay people to live as they please, as long as they don’t try to impose their lifestyle on everyone else.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think what to do with the long winter evenings.

I always thought we had more in common with punk than with anything else, but we had long hair, so we didn’t fit in that box.

In my first few years of being in New York, I had a major identity crisis because I’d never stayed in one place for so long.

Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.