To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be

The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.

I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.

Marriage is memory, marriage is time. Marriage is not only time: it is also, parodoxically, the denial of time.

I was no longer, if I had ever been, afraid to die: I was now afraid not to die.

We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.