“[…] the skin is only what we want others to see of us, underneath it not even we know who we are, […]”

“We can’t choose what we want and don’t want and that’s the hard lonely truth. Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us. We can’t escape who we are.”

“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.”

“We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.”

“Here's what breaks us: Even though we know better, we still want everything to be all right.”

“Men can frighten us, other women can frighten us, and sometimes we worry so much about what frightens us that we wait to have an orgasm until we are alone. We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.”

“And the best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us.”

“Sometimes we know who we want to be and what we want to do long… long before we know how to get there.”

“We never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.”

“We are too often influenced by other people's opinions. We worry too much about what others think of us. We feel called to satisfy other people's expectations, when we know that's definitely not the kind of life we want to live.”