I think you're a wonder. You're beautiful. You're mature. You are, I admit, vastly more experienced than I am. That's what threw me. I was thrown. Forgive me.

I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

There are no uncontaminated angels

How can one say, 'No, this isn't a part of life,' since it always is? The contaminant of sex, the redeeming corruption that de-idealizes the species and keeps us everlastingly mindful of the matter we are.

You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?