“Who embalms the Undertaker when he dies?”

“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.”

“Psychoanalytic insight, Miller seems to suggest, is itself a pathological symptom.”

“On our second date, she kissed me in a bar. I invited her home. We just caught the F train, which seemed like a good omen.”

“How Horrid" has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror--puberty, public disgrace--then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.”

“She has given me a way out.”

“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.”