Through men ... you learn how the world is. Through women you learn what it is.

Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases.

Man has been thrown into the world. It had always made him think of Icarus and those other great tumblers, Ixion, Phaeton, Tantalus - all these jumpers without parachutes from a world of gods and heroes.

As far as he could see, the world was moving, in an orderly capitalist fashion, toward a logical, perhaps provisional, perhaps permanent, end.

Conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say.

The world is a never-ending cross-reference.

She had nothing to do all day ... but did it with the greatest possible speed.