Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

That's the thing with a diary, though. In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it. Not at your desk, but beyond it. Out in the world where it's so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.

I'm not a misogynist. I'm a misanthrope. I hate everyone equally.

Real trouble doesn’t walk around with a ponytail. It doesn’t have a Mohawk or special shoelace patterns. Real trouble has a bad complexion and a Windbreaker.

If you see devils, they lock you up, but in America, if you see angels, they put you on morning TV.

The nice thing about crowds is that someone can throw a bottle and you don't take it personally.

I am optimistic that things will fall into place, and one day I’ll be sitting in New York City with correct bus fare in my pocket.

Dad wants to talk about her death—he needs to—but unlike the rest of us, who yak incessantly about our feelings, he has no vocabulary for it and is reduced to the clichés you’d find on a sympathy card. It’s like not knowing a language.

You haven't lived until you've sailed

Other people’s pain is uninteresting. My own, though, is spellbinding.

I like the kind of man John is. He watches things closely and then does nothing with the information.

On the plane from Paris I heard a man say, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is order a Big Gulp. I’m going to supersize everything!” He said he’d been thirsty the entire time he was in Paris, and though I’d never thought about it, if you’re used to carrying a trash-can-size cup filled with crushed ice and soda, I suppose it would be hard to spend a few weeks in Europe.

February 16, 1988 Reasons to live: 1. Christmas 2. The family beach trip 3. Writing a published book 4. Seeing my name in a magazine 5. Watching C. grow bald 6. Ronnie Ruedrich 7. Seeing Amy on TV 8. Other people’s books 9. Outliving my enemies 10. Being interviewed by Terry Gross on “Fresh Air

Making it worse, I had to sit through another endless preview for Titanic. Who do they think is going to see that movie?

Half the people I know have dead animals in their freezers: reptiles, birds, mammals. Is that normal?

This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers.

Finally he was hit by a train while walking, which is strange because trains don’t generally sneak up on people. For the most part, barring a derailment, you know exactly where to find them.

When I got back to the apartment, the phone rang. It was Dad, who told me I should try to get work as a model. I told him he was being ridiculous and he said no, he’d just been at the barbershop and saw a GQ magazine with a guy on the cover who looked just like me. So I went to the newsstand and found a copy and the person on the cover was not a model but Gary Oldman.

Today the teacher called me a sadist. I tried to say that was like the pot calling the kettle black but came out with something closer to “That is like a pan saying to a dark pan, ‘You are a pan.

March 30, 1998 Because I was in a bind with my BBC story, I devoted most of my day to defrosting the freezer.

Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time.

I realized I was a teacher when I felt warm during class and got up to open the door. Later on there was noise in the hallway, so I got up and shut it. Students can't open and close the door whenever they feel like it.

Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don't, or couldn't learn on their own if they cared to.

September 12, 2001 Paris Last night on TV I watched people jump from the windows of the World Trade Center.

Teaching you is like having a cesarean section every day of the week.

Delinquent style is timeless. Real trouble doesn’t walk around with a ponytail. It doesn’t have a Mohawk or special shoelace patterns. Real trouble has a bad complexion and a Windbreaker.

July 3, 1981 Raleigh There is a new cancer that strikes only homosexual men. I heard about it on the radio tonight.

He told me that his sister is clinically depressed and read Naked during a month-long visit to a psychiatric hospital. According to him, once she’d finished, she loaned it to a fellow patient, who, in turn, loaned it to someone else. The book seemed to lift people’s spirits, and as a result, the hospital has made it recommended reading. I’m not sure whether I believe this, but it’s extremely flattering to think my book is being passed around a German asylum.

The word love was replaced by a heart shape I’m guessing they’ll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point.

I once considered suing Farrah Fawcett for invasion of privacy. Hardly a day passed when I didn't see her on a magazine cover, an ad, a poster. She was destroying my life, but now she's OK.

One of the things we laughed about was an old episode of The Newlywed Game. The host asked the wives, “What’s the most exotic place you’ve ever made love?” He was likely expecting “The kitchen” or “On a tennis court at night,” but one woman didn’t quite understand the question and answered, “In the butt.