--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

It's the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.

To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.

Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.

The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions.

You take off your clothes and you're in bed with somebody, and that is indeed where whatever you've concealed, your particularity, whatever it may be, however encrypted, is going to be found out, and that's what all the shyness is all about and what everybody fears.

I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions. You can travel the length and breadth of my body over superhighways of shame and inhibition and fear.