Sex with a married woman ten years his senior was stress free and fulfilling, because it couldn't lead to anything

Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?

I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.

If she did experience sex-or something close to it-in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.

To sleep with a woman: it can seem of the utmost importance in your mind, or then again it can seem like nothing much at all. Which only goes to say that there's sex as therapy (self- therapy, that is) and there's sex as pastime.

It's just like sex; when [a book is] finished, it's finished.