You can’t selectively numb your anger, any more than you can turn off all lights in a room, and still expect to see the light.

Love is supposed to be based on trust, and trust on love, it's something rare and beautiful when people can confide in each other without fearing what the other person will think.

Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.

What's the point of opening yourself up to your friends if they don't notice your vulnerable state? The point of it all is to love friends completely and utterly, at their best and worst, and to love more than just the good things.

I was always alone, Doc, solitary whether I wished to be or not, ever since I could remember I wished to be lost in another, thought that somehow I could disappear into that heart of yours, take walks within your veins, wander through the bones of you. You had friends, Satan said, you loved and were loved, you must not forget that, at least not that. But did I allow anyone in, I asked Satan, and he said, Did you, does anyone?

When you lose your ego, you win. It really is that simple.

I think Mrs. Leidner seems happier already from just talking about it. That's always a help, you know. It's bottling things up that makes them get on your nerves.

When you open yourself up to people, you show them where to put the knife in.

People are like mussels. You can put them in a vat of boiling water, and some of them will pop open immediately. Some of them will have to float around in the water for a bit, then they’ll slowly release. Others never open up at all, no matter what sort of hot water they’re in.

It's as if when I open myself up to every perception, things create their own focus.

I feel a thrill of excitement at this first tiny glimpse of self-revelation, of intimacy.