“My guess is that she is uncomfortable in such an intransigent world but is unable to live accordingly to her own desire.”

“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 don't want to be loved. I want to be desired. Love is safety, but desire is foul.”

“The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.”

“Desire, like the dead or an unpleasant meal, would keep returning--it was ultimately indigestible.”

“At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others. ”

“But you're beautiful, and the beautiful should be given whatever they want.""Hey, what about the ugly ones?""The ugly ones." She poked her tongue out. "It's their fault if their ugly. They're to be blamed, not pitied.”