To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.

They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.

All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies.

That night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attempted although married six months. Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not sure we got it right. He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully. Early next day I wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had published in a small quarterly magazine. Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us. Or should I say ideal. Neither of us had ever seen Venice.

Life pulls softly inside your bindings. The pod glows - dear stench.

Men know almost nothing about desire, they think it has to do with sexual activity or can be discharged that way. But sex is a substitute, like money or language. Sometimes I just want to stop seeing.

I was more worn out with the "Odyssey" than it was with the "Iliad." I mean, just comparing those two - you can see how it's changing, how the language of the "Iliad" is somehow monstrously new - and that language of the "Odyssey" is more comfortable, even for us.