He wanted to pay her; he thought women ought to be paid for keeping men from dying or going out of their minds.

It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him.

Banality is sometimes striking.

A book consists of two layers: on top, the readable layer ... and underneath, a layer that was inaccessible. You only sense its existence in a moment of distraction from the literal reading, the way you see childhood through a child. It would take forever to tell what you see, and it would be pointless.

What stops you killing yourself when you're intoxicated out of your mind is the thought that once you're dead you won't be able to drink any more.

I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.

Oh, how good it is to be with someone, sometimes.