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But I realized that this craving for solitude was better suited to later life, and that it had affected me too young, too early.

Every day brought me further away from other people, I had been placed out of the world’s sight, as if in a cupboard, and I hoped it would stay that way. I developed a yearning for being alone, unkempt, untended—later, this disappeared and then showed up again in my mother.

The real secret is why love starts out with claws like a cat and then fades with time like a half-eaten mouse, she said.

I’ve always had just enough sense to spare others, but never enough to save myself from misfortune.

How often have I had to lie or keep my mouth shut to protect the people I love most—at the very times I could stand them least—to keep them from plunging headlong into some disaster. Whenever I wanted my hatred to last forever, a feeling of disgust would soften it up. With a hint of love on the one hand, and a heap of self-reproach on the other, I was already surrendering to the next hatred.

Senselessness was easier for me to handle than aimlessness.

It’s easier if you’re the one going out, if you’re the one taking your fear away and leaving your fortune at home, and if there’s someone waiting for you to come back. Sitting at home, waiting, stretches time to the brink and tightens fear to the point of snapping.

It’s too much to expect my routines to really help me. Actually they don’t help me so much as help move life along from one day to the next. There’s no point expecting them to fill your head with lucky thoughts. There’s a lot to be said for moving life along, but there’s essentially nothing to say when it comes to luck, because as soon as you open your mouth you jinx it away.

Moreover, the relationship between drinkers and bottles is more like the one between the couples in wedding pictures: they bring each other to ruin, and still they won’t let go.

I’ve frequently forgotten how to sleep, and have had to relearn each time. It’s either extremely easy or utterly impossible.