“Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history.”
“Someone to whom jokes are never told soon contracts enthusiasm deficiency.”
“To be well married you have to a penchant for the intricacies of intimacy and larval change..If the personality is a spider's web, you will want to know every thread...Pleasures no longer come to you, but there are pickings to be had if you can learn to scavenge for them" ("The Body")”
“If you never left anything or anyone there would be no room for the new. Naturally, to move on is an infidelity -- to others, to the past, to old notions of oneself. Perhaps every day should contain at least one essential infidelity or necessary betrayal. It would be an optimistic, hopeful act, guaranteeing belief in the future -- a declaration that things can be not only different but better.”
“One would hope, as well that intimacy would leave more of a mark, that more of it would remain. But it doesn’t. You just end up thinking, who is this person?”
“ Unlike films, plays don't take place in the past. The fear,anxiety of the actors is happening now, in front of you. If performing is risky, we identify with the possibility of granduer and disaster" ("The Body" and Seven Stories).”
“Now, watching her sleep, and closing his eyes, he felt, in this particular intimacy - stowed beneath her duvet - that he was intruding. At the same time, he knew, settling down, you couldn´t dislike anyone you'd seen sleep”