No bill of sexual rights can hold its own against the lawless, untamable landscape of the erotic imagination.

No bill of sexual rights can hold its own against the lawless, untamable landscape of the erotic imagination.

Much as I try to disguise myself, there is never a time when I'm not aware of being overweight.

My mother is the source of my unease in the world and thus the only person who can make me feel at home in the world.

How much simpler it would be all around if you could put your mind in a cast, like a broken ankle, and elicit murmurings of sympathy from other people instead of skepticism (“You can’t really be feeling as bad as all that”) and in some cases outright hostility (“Maybe if you stopped thinking about yourself so much ”).

Then again, as those who suffer from it know, intractable depression creates a planet all its own, largely impermeable to influence from others except as shadow presences, urging you to come out and rejoin the world, take in a movie, go out for a bite, cheer up.

There's something stubborn about families, unhappy ones in particular: they outlive themselves, and then they live on.