If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.

Your cowardly self-delusions about “love” when you know as well as I do that there’s never been anything between us but contempt and distrust and a terrible sickly dependence on each other’s weakness- that’s why. That’s why I couldn’t stop laughing about the Inability to Love, and that’s why I can’t stand to let you touch me, and that’s why I’ll never again believe in anything you think, let alone anything you say

And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life.

Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.

The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.

If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.

Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn't much different, finally, from any other kind of dying.