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

Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.

[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.

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war.... We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.

In this world the only opinion that holds court is prejudice.

That's what happens when people reach old age; nobody remembers they've been bastards too.

Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but, as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.