Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company.

With no banal reassuring grown-ups present, with grown-up intervention taken away, there is no limit to the terror strange children feel of each other, a terror life obscures but never ceases to justify. There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

My writing, I am prepared to think, may be a substitute for something I have been born without - a so-called normal relation to society. My books are my relation to society.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.