Great unhappiness is incompatible with the belief that it will ever end.

Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself is a form of prayer. . .

Persecution always acts as a jell for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine, that they are God's chosen.

My mother was my first jealous lover.

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

To surrender one's vulnerable body to water has always seemed to me a limpid act of will that has no coutnerpart or equal, unless it is sex.

There are places one comes home to that one has never been to.