Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to get on a television show to reveal.

Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.

The fact that illness is associated with the poor --who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one's midst --reinforces the association of illness with the foreign with an exotic, often primitive place.

The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication.

Sanity is a cozy lie.

Passion paralyzes good taste.