“These days everyone was insisting on their identity, coming out as a man, woman, gay, black, Jew - brandishing whichever features they could claim, as if without a tag they wouldn’t be human.”

“In chili’s hand were his car keys, Ray-bans and Marlboros, without which he wouldn't leave his bathroom. Chili drank only black coffee and neat Jack Daniel’s; his suits were Boss, his underwear Calvin Klein, his actor Pacino. His barber shook his hand, his accountant took him to dinner, his drug dealer would come to him at all hours and accept his checks.”

“Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately.”

“So badly did he not want to fuck it up, he could only fuck it up.”

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

“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")”

“As a Newbody, however, I began to like the pornographic circus of rough sex; the stuff that resembled some of the modern dance I had seen, animalistic, without talk. I begged to be turned into meat, held down, tied, blindfolded, slapped, pulled and strangled, entirely merged in the physical, all my swirling selves sucked into orgasm.”