What a damnably lonely profession writing is! In order to do it, one must banish the world, and having banished it, one feels cosmically alone.

Most sex is not really intimate.

In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving -instead of actually getting up and leaving.

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh.

the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship-only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.