“The fact that Anna is somewherehaving coffee or a dreamis an assault on me.I hate these moments of poverty.What does man eat? ask the phenomenologists.Like the dogs, names,down there,starving.”

“You can get used to eating breakfast with a man in a fedora. You can get used to anything, my mother was in the habit of saying.”

“He had a respect for facts maybe this was one.”

“Who does not end up a female impersonator?”

“Outside, the natural world was enjoying a moment of total strength.”

“There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you—may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn’t that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours.”

“What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.”