It’s not you. It’s anyone. Sometimes I don’t want anyone around. Some afternoons I lie on my bed and the light comes through the shutters on the floo… - Joan Didion

Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.

Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.

We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.