I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.

People dress up for funerals. Why not dress up to celebrate that you’re alive?

It's true what they say - all the good men are married. But it's marriage that makes them good.

I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.

Many male habitues of massage parlors, like Talese, did not like solitary masturbation; in the parlance of the younger generation, it was a "downer." And yet to be masturbated by an appealing masseuse, to be in the physical presence of a woman with whom there was some communication and understanding, if not love, was gratifying and fun.

Sports is about people who lose and lose and lose. They lose games; then they lose their jobs. It can be very intriguing.

He believed that all people existed behind varying layers of armor which, like the archaeological layers of earth itself, reflected the historical events and turbulence of a lifetime. An individual's armor that had been developed to resist pain and rejection might also block a capacity for pleasure and achievement, and feelings too deeply trapped might be released only by acts of self-destruction or harm to others. Reich was convinced that sexual deprivation and frustration motivated much of the world's chaos and warfare.