writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences - experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

It's so effortless to let my loneliness defeat me, make me mold myself to whatever would (in some way - but not wholly) relieve it. I must never forget it... I want sensuality and sensitivity, both... Let me never deny that... I want to err on the side of violence and excess, rather than to underfill my moments.

Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.

My library is an archive of longings.

The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.

Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.