At some point, you no longer feel pain. Sensation disappears and reason is dulled, until you lose all grasp of time and place.

Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me.

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

I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.

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.

Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.

In all the houses keys to memorizing objects and feelings had been written. But the system demanded so much vigilance and moral strength that many succumbed to the spell of an imaginary reality, one invented by themselves, which was less practical for them but more comforting.