In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.

You're painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture.

if you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want

Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own?

...you found you were saying yes when you meant no, and “We’ve got to be together in this thing” when you meant the very opposite ... and then you were face to face, in total darkness, with the knowledge that you didn’t know who you were. And how could anyone else be blamed for that?

What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once you've started it was terribly difficult to stop; soon you were saying "I'm sorry, of course you're right", and "Whatever you think is best", and "you're the most wonderful and valuable thing int he world", and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people.

Anybody's marriage might benefit from an occasional embargo on talk.