The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.

[H]e lay awake, dreading the dawn when he would have to say good-bye to the small universe he had built for himself over the years.

One can convert only a sinner, never a saint.

There are worse prisons than words.

As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.

Wine turns the wise man into a fool and the fool into a wise man.

Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense.