The thought that we are enduring the unendurable is one of the things that keeps us going.

One of the attributes of love . . . is to bring harmony and order out of chaos.

Madness is always fascinating, for it reveals the ungluing we all secretly fear: the mind taking off from the body, the possibility that the magnet that attaches us to a context in the world can lose its grip.

American eroticism has always been of a different provenance and complexion than the European variety, an enjoyment both furtive and bland that is closer to a blushing cartoon than a sensual celebration.

Language: the one tool that enables us to grasp hold of our lives and transcend our fate by understanding it.

The thought that we are enduring the unendurable is one of the things that keeps us going.

But one of the attributes of love, like art, is to bring harmony and order out of chaos, to introduce meaning and affect where before there was none, to give rhythmic variations, highs and lows to a landscape that was previously flat.