“For these are the things of Man: Sex, Lust and Death.”

“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God.”

“Love is just a system for getting someone to call you Darling after sex.”

“Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death. ”

“For Montaigne, the death of youth, which so often takes place unnoticed is the harder death; what we habitually refer to as 'death' is no more than the death of old age...The leap from the attenuated survival of senescence into nonexistence is much easier than the sly transition from heedless youth crabbed and regretful age.”

“We are all hungry for love, acceptance and belonging. Rejection can still feel like death.”

“Once upon a time, loss of love, rejection, weakness and loss of territory all meant death. Now it just feels that way.”