In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, that night, like the turtle that everything else in the universe was on top of.

This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

My impression is that staying together as a couple does not correspond to the challenges themselves, but whether the very idea of breaking up is an option on the table. If it is, then some people take it. If it's not, then they will keep working at it. You must know people who were terribly suited who make it work. And there are couples who seem perfectly suited that break up. It's a mystery to everyone.

This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.

Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do.

I'm not better than anyone, and I'm not trying to convince people to live by my standards of what's right. I'm trying to convince them to live by their own.