...God knows you can have complication and difficulty without any compensating depth or seriousness

Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.

Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.

Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you’re on the right side?

But that’s one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.

All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.

Wisdom consists partly in not pretending anymore, in discarding artifice.