I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.

we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.

I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic.