Remember the botched brothel-visit in L__ducation sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.

wear flannel next to your skin, and never believe in eternal punishment.

To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.

I'm too much of a coward to kill myself. And too much of a coward to live

Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus and it__ hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy and more than anything in the world you want to get off and the only reason in the world you don__ get off is it__ still fifty blocks from where you__e going? Well, I can get off right now if I want to, because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it__ the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. As soon as I__e had enough, it__ my stop. I__e had enough.

I realize how depraved it was to instill false guilt in an innocent child's conscience, causing a distorted image of life, God, & self, leaving little if any feeling of personal worth.