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

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

Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.

The whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality - to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting - but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail. It is as if to say: if these are not valued - if these forms of wanting and feeling and speaking and doing - are not cultivated and encouraged and rewarded in the child, then the child will be mad.

Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.

Transgression is a quest for solitude

The child..will try to make himself..independent of other people. .. Excesses of appetite are self-cures for feelings of hopelessness. ..The child [uses] ‘doubt about food to hide doubt about love.’