A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.

A great commotion immobilized her in her center of gravity, planted her in her place, and her defensive will was demolished by the irresistible anxiety to discover what the orange bells and whistles and the invisible globes on the other side of death were like.

He governed as if he felt predestined to never die

If God hadn't rested on Sunday, He would have had time to finish the world.

She always had a headache, or it was too hot, always, or she pretended to be asleep, or she had her period again, her period, always her period. So much so that Dr. Urbino had dared to say in class, only for the relief of unburdening himself without confession, that after ten years of marriage women had their periods as often as threes times a week.

It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end it itself.

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.