There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse.

I'm not talking to anyone, I'm delivering a monologue. It's the inebriated man's prerogative.

Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven.

I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations--a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.

The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.

I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again.

It was a well-known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to the moral ruin and confusion of the intellect.