You don’t stop loving someone just because you hate them.

Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt—it isn’t enough. And if it isn’t, it isn’t. There’s no living with that. The world is made from our imagination; our eyes...

As it was, she always did whatever occurred to her, which was, admittedly, not difficult for someone in her position, coming from a background where rick of failure was minimal; in fact, you had to...

Die Belohnung für Langeweile sind Sicherheit und Geborgenheit.

Yes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed.

I admired him more than anyone but I didn’t wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wanted to be him. I coveted his talents, face, style. I wanted to wake...

The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.

Falling in love was simple; one had only to yield. Digesting another person, however, and sustaining love, was bloody work, and not a soft job.

The city blew the windows of my brain wide open. But being in a place so bright, fast and brilliant made you vertiginous with possibility: it didn’t necessarily help you grasp those possibilities. I still...

But you’re beautiful, and the beautiful should be given whatever they want.””Hey, what about the ugly ones?””The ugly ones.” She poked her tongue out. “It’s their fault if their ugly. They’re to be blamed, not...

Maybe you never stop feeling like an eight-year-old in front of your parents. You resolve to be your mature self, to react in this considered way rather than that elemental way, to breathe evenly from...

Security and safety were the reward of dullness.

You see, I have come to believe in self-help, individual initiative, the love of what you do, and the full development of all individuals. I am constantly disappointed by how little we expect of ourselves...

He died at the wrong time, when there was much to be clarified and established. They hadn’t even started to be grown-ups together. There was this piece of heaven, this little girl he’d carried around...

I’m turning off; rebelling against rebellion.

Freud wrote that love involves the undervaluation of reality and the overvaluation of the desired object. While the correct valuation of a person is an odd, if not impossible idea, we might say Freud meant...

Dear God, teach me to be careless.

Selbst die Verwandten der Berühmten [sind] berühmt, denn Ruhm [ist] erblich.

I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they...

I can only think how good life on earth can be, at times. What grief two people can give to one another! And what pleasure!

I didn’t want to be educated. It wasn’t the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn’t. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and...

I know love is dark work; you have to get your hands dirty. If you hold back, nothing interesting happens. At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close,...

Desire is naughty and doesn’t conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desire mocks all human endeavour and makes it worthwhile. Desire is the original anarchist and undercover...

My son, there may be a time when I explain these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them.

Just as my body had changed at puberty, now I was developing a sense of guilt, a sense not only of how I appeared to others, but of how I appeared to myself, especially in...

Now, watching her sleep, and closing his eyes, he felt, in this particular intimacy – stowed beneath her duvet – that he was intruding. At the same time, he knew, settling down, you couldn´t dislike...