“To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development.”
“If everybody spent enough time worrying about their own goddamn selves, no one would have to worry about anyone else.”
“But I was beginning to think the real problem might be that who I was was just not good enough.”
“Zerbrowski said, "I only ever understood one woman, and she was kind enough to marry me so I didn't have to decipher anyone else.”
“I even, to my own amusement if no one else's, developed the knack of cursing in iambic pentameters.”
“[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.”