“And is death not the ultimate orgasm, a return to that otherworldly ether, whose very origins were indeed a Big Bang, the ultimate explosion, the supreme chaos, whose resonance is the vibration we constantly seek to reproduce in everything we do.”

“I must find Ecstasy in this InsanityFreedom from their SlaveryThe Truth in their LiesLife in their DeathBeauty in their Homicidal GenocidePeace in the War Whore's evil orgy of Death and NegationLove amongst the RuinsPleasure in my own Pain.”

“I decided to lock myself in. A forced segregation. Sabbatical. A retreat into myself. My selves. Play hide and go seek in the looking-glass. The mirror angled at the foot of my bed. Twisted reflections bouncing off into infinity. Obsessed with my image, the myriad of distored figurines who danced in front of me in rapid succession, every feature exaggerated, every slight imperfection a new delicacy.”

“We know we are very special,” Davis writes in “Special”: “Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?” (from James Wood's review of the FSG "Collected Stories of Lydia Davis")”

“We have seen these bodies, she would think, and even long after we are gone some particle in the universe will hold a memory of the words we once used to describe their beauty.”

“Keeping that man out of trouble was like trying to return a whore to chastity.”

“It is not learning we need at all. Individuals need learning but the culture needs something else, the pulse of light on the sea, the warm urge of huddling together to keep out the cold. We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.”