Don't underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man.

You owe me nothing, but I want everything.

And whether or not we had now paid our dues, he was my blessing, and I was his.

Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.

Look,' I said, struggling to keep up, 'I just wanna make one thing absolutely clear. I don't believe in guns. I just want peace. Okay?' Alessandro stopped in the middle of the corridor, took out the gun, and wrapped my hand around it before I realized what he was doing. 'Can you feel that? That's a gun. It exists. And there are a lot of people out there who do believe in it. So, excused me for taking care of them so you can have your peace.

In many ways, a degree in the history of ideas is the ideal training for an aspiring writer.