I've always thought of wholeness and integration as necessary myths. We're gragmented beings who cement ourselves together, but there are always cracks. Living with the cracks is part of being, well, reasonably healthy.

Memory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. It isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old picture or old words.

Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors.

Every painting is always two paintings: The one you see, and the one you remember.

under our love making I felt a bleakness that couldnt be dispelled. The sadness was in both of us, and I think we pitied ourselves that night, as if we were other people looking down on the couple who lay together on the bed

Like countless first-year medical students, immersed in the symptoms of one disease after another, I am alert to the tingles and pangs, the throbs and quivers of my mortal body, each one of which is potentially a sign of the end.

Depression is when you think there's nothing to be done. Fortunately I always think there's something to be done.