Gratitude’s got a short half-life, Clarice.

Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.

In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the floor of the mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor - the stinking oubliettes, named for forgetting, bottle-shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases - things trapped for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drive us to dangerous behavior.

Funerals often make us want sex-it's one in the eye for death.

Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.

When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can.