“Sometimes the opposite of loss is loss.”

“Sometimes thoughts merely pass through a man's head without mishap, but sometimes they fall out of his mouth on the way through.”

“No, he wasn't like them at all. And even though my experience with the opposite sex was pitifully non-existent, this was someone I wanted to know. Someone I needed to know. Someone I needed to have know me.”

“Life sometimes takes us down a path where our desires are attained, and some passions are left untouched, hidden but not forgotten.”

“I've grown old with this century; there's not much left of either of us.”

“I wasn't thinking of Tom but of myself. And of a self who seemed to be mot 'me' but 'she.' An innocent, moving fecklessly through the days, knowing nothing, whom I saw now with awful wisdom. ... I had hesitated to make this journey, had put it off year after year but had known always that eventually it must be undertaken. And, confronted at last with the mirage -- with the shining phantom of that other time -- I was surprised to find that it was myself that was the poignant presence.”

“Ignorance is bliss.”