I went through college in the 1960s without having any idea that I was going to have to make a living. When I graduated in 1968 it was quite a shock to find out that there was a world out there and that it wasn't going to support me.

Her mother had responded in kind, and the result was “unpleasantness and misery rebounding all the time.

Two: Distract yourself. Paris has something for everyone. Let’s imagine you are feeling slightly disenchanted with women. Dozens of places will persuade you that a beautiful woman is nothing more than a beautiful man in a dress.

Isolated in the attic, Anne could only examine her own history and her own conscience, and try to locate the wellspring of her sadness and her rage.

Who would you rather live with, a bunch of bonobos feeling good? Or chimpanzees eating each other’s babies? Or humans waterboarding each other and destroying the planet?

I wanted to know what he thought about my loving a man whose bills were being paid by another woman.

I discovered how reading a book can make you want to write one.

I’m out of the equation, an innocent bystander at the major love affair Joan is having with Joan.

One: See the two of them everywhere. Contemplate suicide. Would it seem too tourist-y to jump off the Eiffel Tower?

Let me digress a moment to talk about beginnings. How much simpler life would be if we were wise enough to stop at the first blush of romance, the start of a business transaction or a casual friendship. If we knew enough to pause and think: this is as good as it gets. Everything will go downhill from this moment on. So once again our instincts are the opposite of what they should be, propelling us forward exactly when they should be holding us back.