How to Save Your Own Life

Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.

It takes a spasm of love to write a poem.

Loving someone is a loss of freedom -- but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.

...the ocean kept falling into itself, gathering itself up, and falling into itself again.

And what if I don't want forgiveness?

Is perception equivalent to existence?

Love is love, but marriage is an investment.

Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.

What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to deceive?

...jealousy makes the prick grow harder. And the cunt wetter.

If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.

I only know that in our choice of friends and lovers and teachers who will change our lives, we are guided by forces which have nothing to do with the rationalizations we give.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

There is a rhythm to the ending...

My body was flesh, which was only one step removed from shit, from clay, from dust.

They all cheat sooner or later. You might as well have one who isn't a bore the rest of the time.

Photographs... are the most curious indicators of reality.

Humor is a survival tool.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

Having a baby with him meant marrying that face forever.

The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach.

Inevitably, I drank too much, talked too much, smiled too hard, swallowed back too much bile.

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.

How could one create life with someone who represented death?

I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world...

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't...

Without sex it would be so easy to choose appropriate people to live with. Sex was the joker in an otherwise rational deck.

All people believe their suffering is greater than others.

Keeping a journal implies hope.