“My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she'd let go my hands. Let me stay, I wanted to beg: Please don't make me go.”

“I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.”

“I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with...”

“I would always be lonely, but no more alone.”

“Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.”

“Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.”

“We speak the truth because we live in truth.”

“There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.”

“But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.”

“If we fail to listen to music, we shall be miserable.”

“But such was the way with people they loved the things that made them miserable.”

“In reality of everyday occurrences I've had to submit to people in order not to lose them. It's less the submission that bothers me, I guess, than how it makes my life miserable. And what happens i...”