All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.

In that way the long-awaited visit, for which both had prepared questions and had even anticipated answers, was once more the usual everyday conversation.

Both looked back then on the wild revelry...and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude.

I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.

She was lost in her longing to understand.

Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.

The war is in the mountains,” he said. “For as long as I can remember, they have killed us in the cities with decrees, not with bullets.