I was struck by an awful thought, the kind that cannot be taken back once it escapes into the open air of consciousness; it seemed to me that this was not a place you go to live. It was a place you go to die.

weltschmerz: its the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be.

...whatever you're worried about, you're bigger than the worries.

Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

I didn't want to look at them, so I looked away, and to look away was to look at Augustus.

That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt.

While I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.