“They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.”

“I am willing to be annoying if that's what was necessary.”

“Our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.”

“So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love – loving the loving of things whose existence she didn’t care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.”

“We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.”

“She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.”

“We believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God.”