French is the language of diplomacy. Spanish is the language of bureaucracy.

You make something from things that have happened and from things that exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, and you make something through your invention that is truer than anything true and alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

The world was not wheeling anymore. It was just very clear and bright and inclined to blur at the edges.

When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely.

You know I don't love any one but you. You shouldn't mind because some one else loved me.

Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

Any man's life, told truly, is a novel.