I was blown up while we were eating cheese.

I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.

I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless.

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.

Oh, darling, you will be good to me, won’t you? Because we’re going to have a strange life.

Man is not made for defeat.

One cat just leads to another." [Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]