We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.

Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.