It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.

In fact I no longer value this kind of memento. I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. There was a period, a long period, dating from my childhood until quite recently, when I thought I did. A period during which I believed that I could keep people fully present, keep them with me, by preserving their mementos, their "things," their totems.

Mourning has its place but also its limits.

We all have the same dreams.

I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one.

I was relying on a kind of natural transition - the transitions made by someone who is slightly deranged.