The snapshots had become almost as dim as memories.

No Romeo-and-Juliet acts, no nonsense about Love with a large L, none of that popular song claptrap with its skies of blue, dreams come true, heaven with you. Just sensuality for its own sake.

Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might be done in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundreds of hours, and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt the precious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible.

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

Words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest study.

Our vanity makes us exaggerate the importance of human life; the individual is nothing; Nature cares only for the species.

Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.