We were determined by public opinions of us. Would we think we existed without outside confirmation? And how long would we live apart from others before we began to doubt our existence?

My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems.

What others regard as retreat from them or rejection of them is not those things at all but instead a breeding ground for greater friendship, a culture for deeper involvement, eventually, with them.

The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, because for so long our existence depended upon assurances from them.

My old friend, water, my good companion, my beloved mother and father: I am its most natural offspring.

These short stories establish Sontag's originality . . . her unique vision, her success with experiments in the form . . . Sontag makes a wonderful stew of the past, the life caught in memory and imagination, serves it all up lavishly laced with silences, and provides us with a gourmand's series of short courses.

Praise requires constant renewal and expansion.

one keeps one's friends better when one is alone. The corollary to this is that one loses one's friends, slowly, when one sees them too often or when they visit for too long a time.