...the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished andsquandered.

The loss of love is the loss of all rights, even though one had them all.

he's incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that he's incapable of anything really worth while.

Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.

Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.

When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.

Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ("The Plague")