“I am not ultimately interested in writing fiction. I can't make things up. Or rather, I can only make things up about things that have already happened.”

“But how could he admire Joyce’s lengthy, libidinal ‘yes’ so fervently and end up saying ‘no’ to his own life? I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one’s erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”

“It's said, after all, that people reach middle age the day they realize they're never going to read Remembrance of Things Past.”

“I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”

“What would happen if we spoke the truth?”

“It was not a triumphal return. Home, as I had known it, was gone.”

“At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me. I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then”