We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.

The anorexic body is held in the grip of will alone; its meaning is far from stable. What it says - 'Notice me, feed me, mother me' - is not what it means, for such attentions constitute an agonising test of that will, and also threaten to return the body to the dreaded 'normality' it has been such ecstasy to escape.

There are certain types of slightly hysterical human characters who, rather than creating, walk around with a sense of their own potential - it's as if they themselves were art objects. They feel as if their lives are written narratives, or pieces of music.

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

If love is what is held to make us immortal, hatred is the reverse.

Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative.

Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude.