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.

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

Believing in religion is like believing that adulthood is the solution to childhood.

The past influences everything and dictates nothing.

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

I am always true to myself, that is the problem. Who else could I be true to?

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