Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.

I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.

God gives us life, but the world's landlord is the devil.

...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.

Resentment slowly poisoned my blood and I laughed at myself and my absurd hopes.

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

Not evil. Moronic, which isn't quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn't stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced he's doing good, that he's always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around f***ing up ... anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or ... leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.