Quotes from Peter Cameron

She had all the best things wrong with her—incest, insanity, drug addiction, bulimia, alopecia: you name it. All the perfect stuff for a memoir. She's so lucky.

I think therapy is a rather misguided notion of capitalist societies whereby the self-indulgent examination of one's life supersedes the actual living of said life.

And the boys were all clean, their faces freshly and brutally shaved, their hair painstakingly gelled into exquisite apparent carelessness, with this electric feeling inside of them, which matched the feelings in the girls, that they were all ascending, moving into a future that could only improve them, and I wondered what it was like - the miracle, the stupidity of feeling that.

I hate stand-up comics; I think funny is something you are, not something you desperately try to be in front of a roomful of obnoxious people.

It was strange to see someone you have only known alone begin interacting with other people, for that somebody known to you disappears and is replaced by a different, more complex, person. You watch him revolve in this new company, revealing new facets, and there is nothing you can do but hope you like these other sides as much as you like the side that seemed whole when it faced only you.

Unfortunately I have never been good in math. Numbers simply do not interest me or seem as real to me as words.

I actually grew fond of her in a nastily superior kind of way. For she was so completely artless and optimistic and clueless, she didn't care that she smelled bad or was fat or wore clothes unlike everyone else's, she had some weird disconnect with life that kept her constantly bubbling, and you knew she would go blithely through her long horribly boring life thinking every thing was just swell (the opposite of me).

I'm fascinated by lobotomies, the idea of opening up the brain and snipping around a bit and then closing it up again, like fixing a car or something. And the person wakes up and is a little stupid but stupid in a happy, untroubled way.

What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by.

The first night Stephen and I slept together, he whispered numbers into my ear: long, high numbers -- distances between planets, seconds in a life. He spoke as if they were poetry, and they became poetry. Later, when he fell asleep, I leaned over him and watched, trying to picture a mathematician's dreams. I concluded that Stephen must dream in abstract, cool designs like Mondrian paintings.

I'm working on a new problem: Find the value for N such that N plus everything else in your life makes you feel all right. What would N equal? Solve for N.

Happy people make good food and fashion.

They're both about the correct or proper way to do something. There is a correct and proper way to use words and there is a correct and proper way to behave with other people. And I behaved improperly with John and feel bad, so I compensate by obsessing with language, which is easier to control than behavior.

Most people think things are not real unless they are spoken, that it's the uttering of something, not the thinking of it, that legitimizes it. I suppose this is why people always want other people to say "I love you." I think just the opposite—that thoughts are realest when thought, that expressing them distorts or dilutes them.

You're so young... Are you sure that's what you want your life to be, forever and ever? That job? That career? That girlfriend?

Io mi sento me stesso solamente quando sono solo. Il rapporto con gli altri non mi viene naturale: mi richiede uno sforzo.

Odio quando qualcuno dice «Capisco». Non significa nulla ed è vagamente aggressivo. Ogni volta che lo sento in realtà mi suona come un «Vaffanculo».

Credo che nel mio cervello ci sia una specie di setaccio che impedisce un rapido (e tanto meno simultaneo) travaso dei pensieri in parole. Un po' come il filtro nello scarico della vasca da bagno; c'è qualcosa che trattiene i miei pensieri nel cervello, e così bisogna cavarli a forza, come quegli schifosi grovigli di capelli bagnati.

Oh, I could never go back to that work, it's so dreary and the last thing the world needs is another coffee table book.

I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know?

Being alone is a basic need of mine like food and water, but I realize it is not so for others.

Le persone felici cucinano bene e creano cose eleganti. Chi è felice non ha voglia di mangiare carne in scatola e frattaglie tritate. Ha voglia di mettere un vestito che gli doni, non scarpe vecchie e golfoni. Forse lo stato d'animo non influisce sul clima, ma non è detto.

There are things in your life that you don't want to do that you will have to do. You cannot always do and go what and where you please. That is not how life works. This is one of those times when you must do and go what and where you do not want to do or go.

The main problem was I don't like people in general and people my age in particular, and people my age are the ones who go to college.