Quotes by Keith Gessen

One changes, as a writer, fairly quickly; what you wrote six months or a year ago might not sound right anymore.

We hurt one another. We go through life dressing up in new clothes and covering up our true motives. We meet up lightly, we drink rosé wine, and then we give each other pain. We dont want to! What we want to do, what one really wants to do is put out ones hands—like some dancer, in a trance, just put out ones hands—and touch all the people and tell them: Im sorry. I love you. Thank you for your e-mail. Thank you for coming to see me. Thank you. But we cant. We cant. On the little life raft of Mark only one other person could fit. Just one! And so, thwarted, we inflict pain. That’s what we do. We do not keep each other company. We do not send each other cute text messages. Or, rather, when we do these things, we do them merely to postpone the moment when well push these people off, and beat forward, beat forward on our little raft, alone.