Cesare Pavese

You can only go so far with the idea of seeing yourself as you really are before you begin to see that you're staring at an aquarium with no fish, listening for the woodpecker who will never find the tree.

Then it no longer matters where the comma begins and ends or that every sentence is capable of containing its own paragraph.

I like being around spiritual people for this reason: that most of them are calm. They're calm because they don't need me. When I'm around people who have no higher power I note the difference: the vibration of their attention is disturbing; it's like all they believe in is in themselves.

Matt wants to be a writer. When I say to him, most people I know have such funny ideas about what it is to be a writer, he looks at me and says, yes, it's so solitary.