For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.

I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them for various reasons not always easy to explain.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.

A man should have two wives: one to love and one to sew on his buttons.

One could be happy not only without love, but despite it.

Because he had not done what she, with her heart in her mouth, had hoped he would do, which was to be a man: deny everything, and swear on his life it was not true, and grow indignant at the false accusation, and shout curses at this ill-begotten society that did not hesitate to trample on one's honor, and remain imperturbable even when forced with crushing proofs of his disloyalty.

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.