I was thinking that I should be content to kiss him until the break of day. Bertrand ran out of kisses too soon; desire made them superfluous in his eyes. They were only a stage on the road to pleasure, not something inexhaustible and self-sufficient, as Luc had revealed them to me.

People respect unhappiness and find it especially hard to forgive success.

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

You should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans, with songs, laughter, dancing and a lot of wine.

For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured.

Unhappiness has nothing to teach, and resignation is ugly.

He refused categorically all ideas of fidelity or serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile. From anyone else such views would have shocked me, but I knew that in his case they did not exclude tenderness and devotion - feelings which came all the more easily to him since he was determined that they should be transient.