“If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to the unlovable.”

“A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac.”

“Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.”

“The average woman, unless she is particularly ill-favored, regards loving and being loved as a normal part of life. If a man says he loves her she believes him. Indeed some women are convinced they are adored by men who can be seen by all to be running in the opposite direction. For homosexuals this is not so. Love and admiration have to be won against heavy odds. Any declaration of affection requires proof. So many approaches made to them are insincere - even hostile. What better proof of love can there be than money? A ten-shilling note showed incontrovertibly just how mad about you a man is. Even in the minds of some women a confusion exists between love and money if the quantity is large enough. They evade the charge of mercenariness by using the cash they extort from one man to deal a bludgeoning blow of humiliation upon another. Some homosexuals attempt this gambit, but it is risky. The giving of money is a masculine act and blurs the internal image.”

“You fall out of your mother’s womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.”

“Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who, before anything has reared its ugly head, have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies. The habit fitted snugly into my well-established world of make-believe.”

“If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.”