There is something about finding the balance to one's nature - perhaps a culture that flourishes is a culture that has found a similar balance among its people.

The impulse to touch her and all the life in her was something I had to check regularly.

I felt in some ways we'd had some sort of sex, sex of the mind, sex of ideas, sex of words, hundreds and thousands of words...

Is it always that way with men, that first burst of love or sex the thing that binds you? Do you always have to harken back to those first weeks when just the way he walked across a room made you want to take off all your clothes?

You don't struggle with these questions?""No. But I've always thought my opinion was the right one. It's a small flaw I have.""An American flaw.

You don't realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don't have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can't understand the words. Once comprehension comes, so much else falls away. You then rely on their words, and words aren't always the most reliable thing.

Go. Go to your beautiful dances, your beautiful ceremonies. And we will bury our dead.

I asked her if she believed you could ever truly understand another culture. I told her the longer I stayed, the more asinine the attempt seemed, and that what I’d become more interested in is how we believed we could be objective in any way at all, we who each came in with our own personal definitions of kindness, strength, masculinity, femininity, God, civilisation, right and wrong.

You don’t realise how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.

Sometimes you just find a culture that breaks your heart,” she said finally.

He smelled of cigarettes and whiskey, the smell of Cambridge and youth.

That night at Gertie's when she asked me if I preferred to be the one who loved slightly more or loved slightly less. More, I said. Not this time, she said in my ear. I am the one who will always love more. I didn't say, But I love without needing to own. Because I didn't know the difference then.

Surely it is more civilized to kill one man every few months, hold up his head for all to behold, say his name, and return home for a feast than to slaughter nameless millions.

Brain ablaze. Feel like we are unearthing something and finding ourselves, knowing ourselves, stripping odd layers of our upbringing like old paint. Can't write about it fully yet. Don't understand it. I only know that when F leaves and B and I talk I feel like I am saying - and hearing - the first wholly honest words of my life.