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.

The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.

There is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden. There is nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage

You write to find out what you believe.

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

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.

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