Would I still feel this way on leaving the party tonight? Or would I find cunning ways to latch on to minor defects so they'd start to bother me and allow me to snuff the dream till it tapered off and lost its luster and, with its luster gone, remind me once again, as ever again, that happiness is the one thing that in our lives others cannot bring.

Many critics speak about coming-of-age love, about initiation, about young libido, and so forth. I've never seen it only this way. We continue to examine things ever so minutely, we interpret obsessively. We may be less bold at 40 than we were at 17, but we're familiar with the road map; we know the bumps in the road; we recognize the sudden turns, the one-way streets, and the dead ends. And we are hurt just the same as when we were teenagers.

I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.

If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!

Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.

No one starts as a self-hater. But rack up all of your mistakes and take a large enough number of wrong turns in life and soon you stop trying to forgive yourself. Everywhere you look you find shame or failure staring back.

Whoever said the soul and the body met in the pineal gland was a fool. It's the asshole, stupid.