"Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls."

we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were.

No medicine cures what happiness cannot.

When one reaches absolute power, one loses total contact with reality.

But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.

This was when I heard that the first symptom of old age is when you begin to resemble your father.

The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.