It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness.

Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.

Perhaps I overemphasized the value of keeping busy.... I liked to imagine that I was incapable of doing nothing for afternoons myself, but maybe what disturbed me was that I was capable of it. I feared this was a knack one could get the hang of rather readily, and it was therefore now lurking in my house waiting for me to pick it up like a winter flu.

Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in.

Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.