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

People change, but there really are limits. One thing you discover in psychoanalytic treatment is the limits of what you can change about yourself or your life. We are children for a very long time.

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.’

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

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

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

Transgression is a quest for solitude