Love becomes greater and nobler in calamity.

but he only found her in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude.

and the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without making love again.

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.

This was his world, he said to himself, the sad, oppressive world that God had provided for him, and he was responsible to it.

I’ve remained a virgin for you.

A man should have two wives: one to love and one to sew on his buttons.