The faculty of memory cannot be separated from the imagination. They go hand in hand. To one degree or another, we all invent our personal pasts. And for most of us those pasts are built from emotionally colored memories.

Widowers marry again because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don't, because it makes their lives harder. [p. 61]

There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.

Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself.

Men generally do not see women as competition.

Demonstration of mastery gives a feeling of power and that feeling of power is a good feeling.

There is this assumption that much of what I write is about my life, and that simply is not true.