The most sumptuous experience of ingestion is in-between: remembering the last bite and looking forward to the next one.

The good life doesn't knock on the door. Joy is a job.

But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part.

For that matter, thinking of one's self as exceptional is probably more the rule than not.

A boy is a dangerous animal.

For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women got to keep the past itself, whereas men were simply robbed of it.

I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.