He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

And again, as always, after so many years we were still in the same place we always were.

The spirit of her invincible heart guided her through the shadows.

We'll grow old waiting.

When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing - like being seen in your underwear It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat.

and realized that death was not only a permanent probability, as he had always believed, but an immediate reality.

Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it.