“Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.”

“She opened her mouth but did not immediately speak, and I felt, simultaneously, the impulse to coax the words from her and the impulse to suppress them. I always thought I wanted to know a secret, or I wanted an event to unfold – I wanted my life to start – but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.”

“Romance is the sweetening of the soulWith fragrance offered by the stricken heart.”

“Inevitably we construct ourselves. Let me explain. I enter this house and immediately I become what I have to become, what I can become: I construct myself. That is, I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you. And, of course, you do the same with me.”

“I cannot imagine not reading. Some books, of course, are like lovers; you go to bed with them once and fall asleep immediately...But other books become house guests. THey take up residence in the rooms of the mond and never leave.”

“My mother just wanted me to forget it. So, of course, every word was immediately, irrevocably branded into my brain.”