“Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.”

“It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness,”

“The fact of being alive compensated for what life did to one.”

“One simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.”

“He had lost that privilege of simple nature, the dissociation of love and pleasure. Pleasure was no longer as simple as eating; it was being complicated by love. Now was beginning that crazy loss of one's self, that neglect of everything but one's dramatic thoughts about the beloved, that feverish inner life all turning upon the [loved one].”

“But it was not so complicated really. Such things rarely are. It was a simple case of stars aligning; those that didn't being nudged into place.”