“Everything's a scandal. Dying's a scandal. But we all do it.”

“Everything is barely weeks. Everything is days. We have minutes to live.”

“Time and death: It's the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It's just what's there. It was not something I planned to do.”

“What do we have to live for, but each other. What do we have to die for, but our love?”

“If the world is where we hide from ourselves, what do we do when the world is no longer accessible? We invent a false name, invent a destiny, purchase a firearm through the mail.”

“How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?”

“We all know how the thing we secretly fear is not a secret at all but the open and eternal thing that predicts its own recurrence.”