I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.

She looks like a woman who has found it ridiculous to commit herself to a single emotional stance in anything, but must always ride high heavy irony.

Is anyone anywhere happy?

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.

When I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue. Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another.

Everything in life is writable.

I felt dumb and subdued. Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently.