I don't want to hurt myself. I want to stop hurting.

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces. The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

There's a weird kind of paradox that the more expensive the vacation is, the more potentially anxiety-producing it is.

The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

The point of books is to combat loneliness.