He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.

When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous.

When you stop doing things for fun you might as well be dead.

No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.

It is one thing to be in the proximity of death, to know more or less what she is, and it is quite another thing to seek her.

Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.