Most sex is not really intimate.

Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.

A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.

It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper.

Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.

In loving life you love what can't survive.

In a way women are fleshier because of estrogen. It's hard for us to lose weight because when we get super skinny we don't ovulate. Women in camps during the Holocaust didn't menstruate and didn't ovulate. They were starving; they were terrified. Why emulate that condition? It's nonsensical to me.