words.amniisia.com

You don't know that you've crossed a border until you're over on the other side.

... at least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.

What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you -- if you happen to be me -- with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion.

People don't go to psychiatrists and pay good money to talk at length about how happy they are. Talking can spoil it. As a rule you don't settle down at the end of the day with a beer and tell your friend the particulars of how you lucked out and how well the day and the week and the year went, unless you're the gloating type. You just don't do that. It's provocation. You find some other neutral ground. If you're smart, you keep happiness to yourself.

I think of a poem I had to memorize in college: "Love makes those young whom age doth chill,/ And whom he finds young, keeps young still." Something like that.