Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.

Lovers, of course, are notoriously frantic epistemologists, second only to paranoiacs (and analysts) as readers of signs and wonders.

The vocabulary of one’s self-criticism is so impoverished and clichéd. We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.

To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.

The child can find out what the object ..might be only by finding ..obstacles to its access

We have been taught to wish for it, but the wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults , to our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.

There is always a ..belief that by destroying the thing that we love we destroy our needs