“I love my mom. And this time, I told her I loved her. And she told me she loved me, too. And things were okay for a little while.”

“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”

“Ow! Have mercy on my little Tulane
She's too alive to try to live alone
And I know her needs
And although she loves me
She's gonna try to make it
While the poor boy's gone
Somebody should tell her to live
And I'll understand it
And even love her more
When I come back home”

“I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.”

“I told you about my Mexican baby-sitter when I was three. I think I was in love with that little Mexican girl, she was wonderful, she really made me happy! She used to suck me to sleep for my nap every afternoon. I loved it!”

“I once loved a woman, a child I am told
I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul.”

“She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing.”

“The truth is that I wasn't there with her when she needed me. Now she see's how I love Nanhoï and she believes that I can't love her as much as I love my son. That I've never loved her like this. I try to tell her that she's distorting everything in her pain and not seeing the truth. That I've painfully missed her since our separation and that I've never stopped loving her. But even though she gradually calms down, I have a feeling she doesn't believe me.”

“I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

“I would have told her then she was the only thing that I could
love in this dying world but the simple word "love" itself already died and went away.”