“There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.”

“Gula and Cali lie on their sides, their tiny adder-mouths showing the pink of their palates, their bodies throbbing with lustful and obscene dreams. The sky releases its burden of sun and color. Ey...”

“What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.”

“Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouchedjust as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources...”

“I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.”

“Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. The...”

“Change from despair to joy he made her extremely beautiful.”

“The temporal heart resonates at whispersFrom a Truth overarchingOf whose countenanceTimeless Intellect yearns vainly to fathom”

“The world is always satisfied, it turns out, with countenance it can understand. Indolence and cowardice do the rest. Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence.”

“Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you...”

“We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capa...”

“In part, that's because when we delay marriage, it's not just women who become independent. It's also men, who, like women, learn to clothe and feed themselves, to clean their homes iron their shir...”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”