“Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to anymore. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love.”

“No one you love is ever truly lost.”

“He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”

“I'm not unfaithful, darling. I've plenty of faults but I'm very faithful. You'll be sick of me I'll be so faithful.”

“I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.”

“The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.”

“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.”

“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”

“Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and [censored] out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.”

“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

“we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”