Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people.

Through [my friends] I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it...which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be.

When I tried to imagine being beautiful, I could only imagine living without the perpetual fear of being alone, without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like.

Does something which exists on the edge have no true relevance to the stable center, or does it, by being on the edge, become a part of the edge and thus a part of the boundary, the definition which gives the whole its shape?

Partly I was honing my self-consciousness into a torture device, sharp and efficient enough to last me the rest of my life.

Animals were both the lives I took care of and the lives who took care of me.

Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people.