Between the covers of the books that no one had ever read again, in the old parchments damaged by dampness, a livid flower had prospered, and in the air that had been the purest and brightest in the house an unbearable smell of rotten memories floated.

He thought about his people without sentimentality, with a strict closing of his accounts with life, beginning to understand how much he really loved the people he hated most.

The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed form the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.

This was his world, he said to himself, the sad, oppressive world that God had provided for him, and he was responsible to it.

Children's lies are signs of great talent.

There's no greater misfortune than dying alone.

Time was not passing...it was turning in a circle.