She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn't be spoken aloud when you are happy.

When I replied that I loved her too in that way, I was the liar, not she, for I never lose the consciousness of time: to me the present is never here: it is always last year or next week.

...and yet could swear it was just then that I fell in love. It wasn't, of course, simply the onions -- it was the sudden sense of an individual woman, of a frankness that was so often later to make me happy and miserable.

All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow.

In the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.

If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.