“The difference between sex with David and sex with Stephen is like the difference between science and art. With Stephen it's all empathy and imagination and exploration and the shock of the new, an...”

“You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to ...”

“I'm human. That's how humans spend their time, doing shitty things.”

“That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to m...”

“The trick, it seems to me, is to stave off regret. Thats what the whole thing is about. And we cant stave it off forever, because it is impossible not to make the mistakes that let regret in, but t...”

“So there we have it. I get up in the morning determined to do something approximating to the right thing, and with in two hours find something to feel guilty about.”

“It was what she imagined doing heroin would be like: terrible for you but impossible to resist.”

“It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.”

“To be of value to humanity, start by thinking for yourself.”

“Love is not an emotion. It is your very existence.”

“The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon ...”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”