“Like all fiction, my lies are just my efforts to be truer than the truth.”

“The characters act for reasons that they cant control and, as readers, we have to believe in their motivations, their sense of choice and in the reality of their suffering, even though, deep down, ...”

“An unpublished writer should doubt themselves. They should constantly wonder whether what theyre creating has merit. And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they cant mak...”

“Publishers are businesses and I dont blame them for that. If they didnt make money by publishing books, there wouldnt be any books.”

“A good book is not the same as a successful one.”

“A novel must be judged on its merits, not on how hard the journey was to write it.”

“There is something relentless about the serenity of nature which has a crushing effect on the human mind. The lavish splendour of her phases, which completely ignores human strife, fills the race o...”

“Almost every day I can feel myself suffering mainly in the head, I can explain the pain to myself but knowing it comes from an inflammation of my imagination doesn't prevent it being reality itself...”

“I guess in this culture of ever-shortening attention spans, it's good if a song can lift us out of the madness, even if only for a few minutes.”

“Suicide. It's something I've been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it. That's the note. Word for word. And I know it's word for word because I wrote it dozens of ti...”

“You can think about killing yourself a thousand times a day and each time it gets just a little bit more real. But the day you wake up and know beyond the shadow of a doubt you are going to go thro...”

“Suicide is not a choice, it is what is left when everything else fails.”

“July 24, 6:03 A.M.The laundry was warm and the rafters were firm, and Michael Holzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff...Michael Holzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for...”

“A book is a suicide postponed.”

“How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal father?”