“Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness.”

“The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.”

“She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.”

“The road to wisdom is paved with excess.

The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.”

“I'm not trying to turn you into a bourgeois, Naomi. If the bed is too luxurious, we can do it on the floor.”

“We are at the helm of not only our own physicality but our environment and other species, too, as sentient, conscious beings who can think of future and affect consequence, and create progeny with our minds as well as our bodies.”

“To believe that if we could have but this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.”

“I do not believe it is in our nature to love impartially. We deceive ourselves when we think we can love two beings, even our own children, equally. There is always a dominant affection.”

“An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age”

“I feel sad for people and the queer part we play in our own distasters.”