“Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.”

“That was the danger of pretending to be someone else all the time. If you do it long enough, eventually you start to become that person.”

“Do what you do for the sheer joy of it,Do what you choose,not what someone else chooses for you.”

“But who can foresee such things? None of us can predict the final outcomes of our actions, and few of us even try; most of us just do what we do to prolong a moment's pleasure or to stop the pain. And even when we act for the noblest reasons, the last link of the chain all too often drips with someone's blood.”

“Hard fun is, of course, the idea that we take pleasure in accomplishing something difficult: the joy in meeting and mastering a challenge. As a result, when someone is doing something that is hard fun, moment by moment it looks more like "work" than "fun," but the net effect is pleasurable overall.”

“You are speaking...as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing... what you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure.”