It is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things.

I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.

He was healthier than the rest of us, but when you listened with the stethoscope you could hear the tears bubbling inside his heart.

The truth was that I could not manage my soul, and I was becoming aware of old age because of my weakness in the face of love.

Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.

She felt the abyss of disenchantment.

When I wake up," he said, "remind me that I'm going to marry her.