“You can't do anything in life. The social barriers in life are so intense and horrific that every encounter is just fraught with so many problems and dread. Every social situation is a potential nightmare.”

“Player: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.”

“Because adoption is a lifelong journey, we have a future filled with the potential to learn invaluable lessons. But many of us haven't been taught that we have a choice in every situation in life.”

“Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. It's terrible the way we scotch silence & solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I can't see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, & it does worry me, for time is slipping by , and nothing is done. It isn't as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isn't: it's just a waste.”

“The economic base of a social formation, the infrastructure, includes the social relations of production the produce the material necessities of life. In doing so, it produces the superstructure, that is, ideology, belief, religion, and juridical controls.”

“Can't repeat the past? We do it every day. We build a life, or try to, of pleasures and duties that will become routine, so that every day will be the same day, or nearly so, "the day of our life," Randall Jarrell called it.”