“Self-destruction would be a brief, almost autoerotic free-fall into a great velvet darkness.”

“The first lesson I would learn about love is that it is filled with disappointment. The second thing I would learn is that the search for a cure almost invariably ends up being self-destructive.”

“We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self destruction.”

“Now writing is just working your way toward the border that the innermost secret draws around itself, and to cross that line would mean self-destruction. But writing is also an attempt to respect the borderline only for the truly innermost secret, and bit by bit to free the taboos around that core, difficult to admit as they are, from their prison of unspeakability. Not self-destruction but self-redemption. Not being afraid of unavoidable suffering.”

“Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.”

“But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”