“At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end?”

“What is life without this? which was why, in the end, it was I, and not her, who blurted out, not once, but many, many times, You'll kill me if you stop, you'll kill me if you stop, because it was also my way of bringing full circle the dream and the fantasy, me and him, the longed-for words from mouth to mouth, which was when I must have begun using obscenities that he repeated after me, softly at first, till he said, "Call me by your name and I'll call you by my name," which I'd never done in my life before and which, as soon as I said my own name as though it were his, took me to a realm I never shared with anyone in my life before, or since.”

“Shame, which is the reluctance to be who we're not even sure we are, could end up being the deepest thing about us, deeper even than who we are, as though beyond identity were buried reefs and sunken cities teeming with creatures as we couldn't begin to name because they came long before us.”

“We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.”

“Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. (p. 225)”

“The point of art is not to give you what you already feel comfortable with; that’s reporting, not art, that TV, not art, that’s magaziney art, not art. Art gives you so personal an interpretation that it compels you to say, “This here is more real than what I know is really out there.”

“I don't always think I'm a good person. But telling people this only makes them want to prove me wrong, and the more they try to prove me wrong, the more I want to push them away, but the more I push them away, the guiltier I get, the nicer I become, the more they think I've changed. It never lasts. In the end I learn to hate both myself and them for things that should have lasted no longer than a few hours.' She reflected on this. 'Maybe a few nights. Inky and I could have stayed friends.''This is the most twisted thing you've said so far''What, that being kind to people makes me want to hurt them? Or that hurting them makes me want to be kind?”