شخصان مُكبّلان إلى بعض قرب كومة روث، يجب ألا يتشاجرا، فهما سيجعلان كومة الروث، تزداد علواً فقط بضعة إنشات، سيكون عليهما العيش مع رائحة نتانتهما تحت أنفي… - Susan Sontag

Beware of anything that you hear yourself saying often.

Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation.

Feeling of discontinuity as a person. My various selves — how do they all come together? And anxiety at moments of transition from one “role” to another. Will I make it fifteen minutes from now? Be able to step into, inhabit the person I’m supposed to be? This is felt as an infinitely hazardous leap, no matter how often it’s successfully executed.