“How do I like to write? withe a soft pencil and a hard dick, not the other way round.I like the paper of all kinds : creamy, white, yellow, thick, thin, lined, plain. In my cupboard I have at least fifty notebooks, each of which, at the time of purchase, filled me with excitement of what might be said of new thoughts discovered.....and then-nothing.”

“Any Advance in wisdom requires a good dose of shamelessness. Intimacy”

“Not everything can be achieved alone.”

“Secrets are my currency: I deal in them for a living. The secrets of desire, of what people really want, and of what they fear the most. The secrets of why love is difficult, sex complicated, living painful and death so close and yet placed far away. Why are pleasure and punishment closely related? How do our bodies speak? Why do we make ourselves ill? Why do you want to fail? Why is pleasure hard to bear?”

“I could have ripped at those pages with my fingernails in order to get all of the material inside me.”

“Like you, she will have been with other people, but I've got a feeling there's something between you.”

“The girl had many virtues: money, a car--a gold-coloured Capri, in which she played the latest funk--a big house and a rich father. When Valentin asked, 'What does your boyfriend do?' she replied, 'But I don't have one, really.”