The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that.

... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

The world tends to trap you in the role you play and it is always extremely hard to maintain a watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.

It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.