You have to talk to make sure you're alive.

Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren’t for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn’t so when stripped of personal risks.

Just as asking “I wonder why?” will keep you curious about the world, asking “I wonder if?” will keep you engaged in the world. Nearly every adventure I have been on, and nearly every new thing I have tried, began with the question: “I wonder if I could do that?” The answers have not been uniform.

Good that you ask — you should always ask, always have doubts.

[T]he anxiety-laden problem of what will happen to me when I die is, after all, like asking what happens to my fist when I open my hand, or where my lap goes when I stand up.

Cuz how do you know yer alive if you don't hurt?

How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.

So, having dried my tear-swollen eyelids, I take up my pen to inquire of you, are you alive or did you die? If you are dead, please let me know, and I will tell the cook, for ever since she heard about it she has been saying her prayers.

When I can't see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn't help much.

The important thing is never to stop questioning.

If suddenly you do not exist,
If suddenly you are not living,
I shall go on living.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall go on living.

All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life - where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.

Since I doubt, I think; since I think, I exist.