Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.

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.

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

There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.

It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.

Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.

I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin.