Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.

We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.