My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separate what seems real from what seems fantastic.

The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom.

Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.

He always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard.

He spent six hours examining things, trying to find a difference from their appearance on the previous day in the hope of discovering in them some change that would reveal the passage of time.

A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by.

It was a love of perpetual flight.