Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.

People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?

to look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness of memory. ... the past is not static. It can be relived only in memory, and memory is a device for forgetting as well as remembering. It, too, is not immutable. It rediscovers, reinvents, reorganizes. Like a passage of prose it can be revised and repunctuated. To that extent, every autobiography is a work of fiction and every work of fiction an autobiography.

gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.

It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.

It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.

There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.