What’s the point of opening yourself up to your friends if they don’t notice your vulnerable state? The point of it all is to love friends completely and utterly, at their best and worst, and...

Love is supposed to be based on trust, and trust on love, it’s something rare and beautiful when people can confide in each other without fearing what the other person will think.

Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.

It’s as if when I open myself up to every perception, things create their own focus.