Collapse, spread, merging, union: these things sound like the opposite of loneliness, and yet intimacy requires a solid sense of self to be successful and satisfying.

[of Nan Goldin] In an afterword to Ballad written in 2012, she declared: ‘I decided as a young girl I was going to leave a record of my life and experience that no one could rewrite or deny.

This is what's so terrifying about being lonely: the instinctive sense that it is literally repulsive, inhibiting contact at just the moment contact is most required.

There are kinds of solitude that provide a respite from loneliness, a holiday if not a cure.

Why do you put yourself in unsafe places? Because something in you feels fundamentally devoid of worth.

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.

He remembers which sisterI like least and askshow she is doing.(lines 9-11 of the poem 'Divorce')

You can’t lead people to where you’ve not been yourself. When you all get stranded, you need the knowledge of someone who knows the way!

I like a look of agony, because I know it's true

Anyone who has tried to build something that changes people's lives sometimes finds life to be a distraction, and finds people who don't care as much as they do to be annoying.

Do you really like a particular stock? Put 10% or so of your portfolio on it. Make the idea count … Good [investment] ideas should not be diversified away into meaningless oblivion.

Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?

I'm still, except for making overseas trips, I'm staying just about as busy as I ever did.

Behind the camera, I was invisible. When I lifted it up to my eye it was like I crawled into the lens, losing myself there. and everything else fell away.

Beauty is as useful as the useful. More so, perhaps. (Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile. Plus peut-etre.)