You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.

My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life… Not that I knew what I wanted in life - I didn’t. I loved reading novels to distraction, but didn’t write well enough to be a novelist; being an editor or a critic was out, too, since my tastes ran to the extremes. Novels should be for pure personal enjoyment, I decided, not part of your work or study. That’s why I didn’t study literature

It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not real friendship.

Isn't life strange? There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can't stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match.

We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss.

I’ve built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself

You can see a person's whole life in the cancer they get.