Her laugh was sad and taciturn, seemingly detached from any feeling of the moment, like something she kept in the cupboard and took out only when she had to, using it with no feeling of ownership, as if the infrequency of her smiles had made her forget the normal way to use them.

A falcon who chases a warlike crane can only hope for a life of pain.

Jealousy knows more than truth does.

No matter what you do this year or in the next hundred, you will be dead forever.

Cease, cows, life is short.

It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.

Then he knew that they had rounded the cape of good hope, and he took her large, soft hand again and covered it with forlorn little kisses, first the hard metacarpus, the long, discerning fingers, the diaphanous nails, and then the hieroglyphics of her destiny on her perspiring palm.