Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.

Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself

I was gushing and I knew it. I surprised myself with my eagerness to please, felt myself saying too much, explaining too much, overinvolved and overexcited in the way you are when you're a kid and you think you've found a soul mate in the new boy down the street and you feel yourself drawn by the force of the courtship and so act as you don't normally do and a lot more openly than you may even want to.

It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.

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

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.